Around 60,000 Saudi nationals were added to the kingdom’s private-sector labor force under the Saudization program during the third quarter of 2021, the National Labor Observatory (NLO) has said.
The percentage of Saudis in the private sector increased to 23.59 percent, up by 0.96 percent compared to the previous quarter.
The observatory said that according to the General Organization for Social Insurance data, the number of Saudi nationals in the private sector job market was 1,826,875 in Q3, an increase of 3.41 percent.
Around 65.06 percent of these workers were males and 34.94 percent females.
Saudization or Nitaqat requires employers in the private sector with over nine employees to hire a certain percentage of Saudi nationals, depending on the company’s industry and the number of employees in the company. Companies with less than 10 employees are exempt from the zoning system but are still required to hire at least one Saudi national.
The increase in the number of locals in the private sector is a result of endeavors of the Saudi Human Resources Development Fund (Hadaf) in developing and improving programs and initiatives aimed at supporting the national workforce, the NLO said.