Saudis Push Young People, Including Women, Into Jobs
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—With eyes darting over racks of sales items, 28-year-old Haya Murzouq worked the counter at her new job at one of Riyadh's busier lingerie boutiques in December.With one hand, she checked a tag for a female customer. With the other, the Saudi woman hoisted the trailing end of her black head scarf over her face, draping it for modesty as she spotted male customers.
Few mall shoppers gave the shop a second glance, and a passing patrol of Saudi religious police didn't bother to stop in, but Ms. Murzouq and her co-workers, all of whom are Saudi women, are doing things long unseen in the capital and much of the rest of the kingdom: staking out sales racks and scrubbing shop floors for all to see. They stand among the vanguard in three Saudi government initiatives to nudge young Saudis, male and female, into a national labor market distorted for decades by reliance on inexpensive foreign workers.
"People are thinking the Saudi woman is lazy," said Ms. Murzouq, who holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, but says it is business that suits her. In her new position, she earns 3,500 riyals ($933) a month—about 1,000 riyals more than the non-Saudi man who had her job before, she said. "All the world, they will see that Saudi women love to work."
Keenly aware that youth unemployment has been a driving factor in revolutions elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, and that half of its own population is 18 or younger, the government is taking steps to change a mindset left from the days when the oil kingdom's citizens were few and jobs were many: that Saudi Arabia's citizens take the cushiest jobs or take no jobs at all.
On Jan. 4, Saudi Arabia's more than 7,000 lingerie shops were forced to lay off their mostly male expatriate clerks, giving Saudi women one of their first footholds in the world of retail. Until now, religious codes restricting the mingling of men and women largely limited Saudi women to health care, education and some office jobs.
Currently, expatriate workers hold 90% of jobs in Saudi's private sector. The foreign workers accept salaries that are on average less than a third of what Saudis earn, in the low hundreds of dollars each month, which analysts said also drives down the average wages for Saudis.
In the second jobs initiative, on Dec. 31 the government deposited the initial payments in the country's first-ever program of unemployment benefits for Saudis between the ages of 20 and 35.
A third program is the latest in decades of quota programs seeking to increase the percentage of Saudis employed by all companies. International labor experts said past programs in the Gulf to increase the ranks of local citizens in the work force have largely failed.
Government data released last week for 2010 showed just how skewed Saudi's labor market remains: Despite youth unemployment figures that are among the highest in the world, Saudi's private sector hired 1.7 million foreigners that year—and just over 100,000 Saudis.
For decades, Gulf governments packed their citizens into well-paying public-sector jobs, past the point of productivity, economists said. The result: The Saudi government employs 80% of all working Saudis.
"We do have a structural problem, and it was not noticed because the situation started like 30 years ago or so, at the first peak of oil prices in the [1970s]," said Essam al Zamel, a businessman who writes about the Saudi economy. "The population was not that high, and it was easy to hire almost all the Saudis…in the government sector."
Meanwhile, "the private sector got addicted to cheap [foreign] labor," Mr. Al Zamel said.
These days, more than one out of every four Saudis under 30 is unemployed, a rate twice that of the world average.
In Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, about two-thirds of the population is under 30—twice as high a percentage of young people as the U.S. Annual population growth here is 2.5%, a rate four times as high as in advanced economies, the International Monetary Fund said. The government, meanwhile, is spending 40% of its budget just paying the salaries for its public payrolls, economists said.
With millions of young Saudis headed for the job market, even oil-rich Saudi Arabia can't afford to keep padding its public payrolls, economists said.
"When we employ our youth with the support of businessmen, we can get rid of a large number of foreign workers," Prince Salman, the defense minister, said at a recent appearance with his brother Prince Naif, the crown prince, to urge companies to get behind the labor programs. "We should encourage our youth to work."
At a forum in Riyadh last week, Labor Minister Adel Fakeih previewed dozens more pricey high-tech initiatives to get young Saudis into jobs. But he answered regretfully when a young Saudi woman asked if the programs would create jobs for the millions of Saudis who will be entering the market. "To be honest, I cannot say that we can promise that," he replied.
Economists say the three new programs fall far short of solving some of Saudi Arabia's biggest labor problems, including the failure to create enough high-paying skilled jobs.
Saudi officials expected 500,000 Saudis to sign up for the unemployment benefits last summer and fall—3.5 million did.
For the 700,000 accepted to the program, "most of them think it's a present from the king. Something to spend on mobiles," said Haya Muhammad al-Arji, 29, an unemployed information-systems specialist. Ms. Al-Arji was one of what the Labor Ministry said were the first 550 Saudis to have the first full 2,000-riyal monthly unemployment payment deposited into her account.
Older Saudis, though, recall the days before the oil boom of the 1970s. They talk of men and women working together in fields and Saudi women working as maids.
"It took a couple of generations to change that," said Eman Fahad al Nafjan, a university professor in Riyadh and blogger on women's issues. "It will take a couple of generations to change that back."
Write to Ellen Knickmeyer at ellen.knickmeyer@dowjones.co
COPY COPY http://online.wsj.com/
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário