Qatari workforce: what it means for the private sector

With the continued volatility in energy prices and mixed sentiments about the economy, 2016 is projected as a year of ‘cautious optimism’ across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and organisational and HR leaders are scrambling to review their budgets and optimise costs. The mantra is simply to do more with less, write Radhika Punshi and David Jones.

According to figures released by the Qatar Statistics Authority (Labour Force Statistics Bulletin 2012) and research by our team at The Talent Enterprise:

• Out of a total labour force of 1.34 million, only 88,600 or so are Qataris.
• 99.2 percent of private-sector jobs are held by expatriates.
• The total number of Qatari students in public and private universities is about 10,115.
• The total number of graduates that Qatar had in 2013-2014 was around 1970 and this number went up to around 2165 Qatari graduates for the subsequent year.
• Finally, when you filter the list of viable graduates (by their degree/ qualification), this number drops to nearly 550 to 650 potential candidates for employers to hire. This is of course assuming that all of these students would be keen to work.

This article was published here