RIYADH — Unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia fell marginally in the first quarter of the current fiscal year when compared to the fourth quarter of the last year, a General Authority for Statistics (GaStat) report has said. It said the unemployment rate decreased from 12.0% to 11.8% during the mentioned period. At the same time, unemployment rate among females reached 28.2%, a decrease of 2.6 percentage points. The unemployment rate for men (aged 15 years and above) reached 5.6%, with an increase of 0.7 percentage points, the report said. The labor force participation rate for the total population (aged 15 years and above) increased by 1.8 percentage points compared to Q1 of 2019, reaching 58.2%. Labor force participation for men was 80.4%, while the rate of participation of women in the Labor force was 25.4%, statistics showed, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Tuesday. The released data in these statistics do not yet reflect the impact of COVID-19 crisis as they were collected early in the first quarter. The total unemployment rate stood at 5.7% in Q1 this year. Based on the administrative data, Saudi and non-Saudi employees amounted to 13.63 million individuals. The total number of Saudi employees (males and females) reached 3.2 million individuals, 2.06 million Saudi men and 1.13 Saudi females, the report said. The participation rate in the labor force for Saudis(aged 15 years and above) fell by 0.5 percentage points to 46.2% compared to Q1 2020. The Saudi male participation rate in the labor force fell by 0.8 percentage points from the previous quarter, reaching 65.8%, while the Saudi female participation rate fell by 0.1 percentage points from the previous quarter, reaching 25.9%.
