Minister of Labor Ghazi Bin Abdul-Rahman Al-Gosaibi confirmed today that Ministry of Labor will not consider any figures on labor force and unemployment rates in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia except what is issued by the General Statistics Authority, the official organisation for such statistics.
"The latest figures issued by the Authority state that the unemployment figure is around 9.6 percent of the total Saudi labor force (15 years and over). This means there are 300,000 unemployed people in the Kingdom."
These remarks came in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency after it had been noted that there had been many enquiries lately about conflicting unemployment figures in the Kingdom.
"The conflicting figures are prompted by studies which are not based on professional statistical methods. These studies are then published by the local media," he added.
Source: SPA
