Mobility in the Saudi Labor Market

Workers change jobs all the time. Presumably, each worker might have different reasons for his/her individual motivation for the change of job/employer, yet a common factor in the aggregate mobility pattern in job/occupation changes is undoubtfully the current and future income expectations. Job mobility/immigration research well documents that worker in a particular occupation (or immigrants) do not make up a random sample of the respective population. Therefore, mobility patterns in the labor market should take this fact in the research design. In this research we will use administrative data on Saudi and non-Saudi workers to investigate the relative labor market performances of foreign workers compared to Saudi nationals (from the related ministry official administrative data on another ongoing project collaboration). The dataset contains monthly information from 2013 to 2020 on various worker characteristics in a longitudinal structure as such the employers region, gender, Saudi/Non-Saudi, birth year, job classification, education, and the country of origin in the case of a foreign employee, and finally monthly salary information are available. This rich dataset allows us to study various aspects of Saudi labor market, and particularly the mobility patterns. Saudi labor market which traditionally is described as a dual labor market with 90% foreign presence in the private sector jobs. Yet this trend is recently changing with a battery of reforms under Saudi Vision 2030 which addresses lack of Saudi nationals presence in private sector. This research ultimately aims to address the possible mobility patterns we will likely observe with the new laws and subsequentially, it aims to offer policy recommendations for a balanced labor market in the kingdom.