FT story on growing domestic backlash to the guest worker economy there:
When a survey by HSBC bank revealed that expatriates working in Saudi Arabia were among the world's wealthiest, with disposable incomes allowing them to buy luxuries such as yachts, many citizens of the kingdom were furious.
Newspaper columnists, readers and social media users lamented the money that they believed foreigners were skimming off Saudis, portraying expatriates as wallowing in luxury while the country struggles with unemployment.
"We are not surprised, Foreigners control all retail business, grocery stores . . . They are given facilities and priority, killing all job prospects for Saudis," wrote Rashid al-Fawazan in Riyadh, a newspaper. "Nine million foreigners are bleeding the country dry. We don't even have real industry which forces investors to train our young people."
Lot of hype here, as most guest workers early about $150--a month! (must be toy yachts), but here's a $375b economy, the biggest in the Arab world, and it still has official unemployment of 10-11 percent (I would bet the underemployment is far larger).
Two-thirds of Saudis are under 30, indicative of the larger demographic wave working its way into its working years all across the Middle East and North Africa, where the standard prediction is the need for job creation on the scale of 100m jobs over the next two decades.
Meaning . . . this is just the tip of the social unrest iceberg--unless the job creation follows.
The youth bulge of the Middle East inevitably becomes the middle-age bulge of the Middle East, meaning a lot of certain types of behaviors (crime, terror, restlessness) should naturally go down IF the job creation absorbs those numbers. Saudi Arabia shoots itself in the foot by having two labor rule sets: one for Saudis (hard to fire, for example) and one for foreigners. Then there's the issue of unrealistic expectations among new Saudi college graduates, who feel they deserve a management slot from the get-go. The entitlement mindset going back to the original oil booms persists, say observers. And let's not forget the ban on women and men working together--a huge obstacle.
As one local banker/economist put it: "How can you create jobs for Saudis if they do not want to join the private sector, and the private sector does not want them?"
The gov keeps telling the private sector to hire more Saudis, but it seems to be unrealistic in its expectations, given the lack of social change and accompanying rule-sets. Abdullah needs to pick up the pace.