Economic Research: Greater Share Of Working Women Bolster Saudi Arabia's Economic Growth, Improving Productivity Will Entrench It

Saudi Arabia continues to diversify its economy away from oil and upstream crude production, with the non-oil sector now accounting for well over half of GDP. The government's ambitious Vision 2030 diversification program, announced in 2016, aims to grow the non-oil economy through investment in planned economic diversification projects, "Saudization" of the workforce (replacing expatriates with Saudis), increasing female participation in the workforce, improving the business environment, and broader socioeconomic liberalization. Saudi Arabia's labor market reforms have led the country's female labor force participation rate for Saudi nationals to nearly double to almost 36% in 2022 from 19% in 2016. This, in turn, boosted the overall participation rate to a record high of 61.7% in March 2023, compared with a

...- As a result of Saudi Arabia's efforts to diversify its economy, its female labor force participation rate has nearly doubled in 2016-2022. - If labor force participation in the kingdom continues to grow by 1 percentage point per year over the next 10 years, we project annual real GDP growth could be on average 0.3 percentage points higher than it would be if the participation rate grew at its historical trend. - Expanding the workforce takes care of only one part of the equation in bolstering longer-run economic growth. The other, more important, part is to improve productivity. Saudi Arabia continues to diversify its economy away from oil and upstream crude production, with the non-oil sector now accounting for well over half of GDP. The government's ambitious Vision 2030 diversification program, announced in 2016, aims to grow the non-oil economy through investment in planned economic diversification projects, "Saudization" of the workforce (replacing expatriates with Saudis), increasing...

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