A new World Bank report highlights a ‘decade of progress’ in Saudi Arabia’s labour market, but still identifies areas for improvement, including more protections for workers
“To reach the next frontier, Saudi Arabia should accelerate next‑generation reforms across skills, jobs, and protections,” the report states.
The World Bank report — A Decade of Progress: Inside Saudi Arabia’s Labour Market Transformation — goes on to highlight various suggested reforms covering diverse areas from refining migrant admission policies to enhancing working conditions and worker protections.
The report is grounded in a time-based comparison between 2015, as the baseline year prior to Vision 2030, and 2025, enabling an assessment of the tangible impact of government-led reforms and policies.
Saudi Arabia is gradually introducing changes to its labour market and economy as it seeks to diversify and modernise away from a traditional dependence on fossil fuels.
This includes improvements to areas like health, safety and the environment, which are often intertwined with labour rules and regulations.
The report documents some of the changes to policy and initiatives over almost 20 years, including efforts to enhance worker conditions, citing a 2018 occupational safety and health management regulation and more recent efforts to strengthen the wage protection system.
Regulatory reforms also strengthened protections and expanded opportunities for women in the kingdom.
“Workplace protection against harassment under the Anti‑Harassment Law mandated prevention, reporting, and response, promoting dignified, safe work environments,” the World Bank report notes.
“Driving reforms operationalised the 2017 Royal Decree by eliminating mobility restrictions and cementing licensing, enforcement, and road‑safety systems.”
Prior regulatory restrictions regarding the industries in which women could work and the hours they could work were also abolished in 2020.
These advances have been matched by the growth of the private sector and the additional employment opportunities this has brought with it.
A policy was also implemented in 2023 that requires firms with more than 50 employees to report annual training activities for staff, through the Qiwa platform, which reports on areas such as training hours, number of trainees and training budgets.
