Saudi jobless rate falls to 6.5% in Q2 2026, GASTAT says

Summary

• Saudi unemployment fell to 6.5% in Q2 2026 from 6.8% a year earlier, GASTAT said.
• The rate ticked up from 6.4% in Q1, leaving the quarterly trend slightly higher.
• Joblessness among Saudi women hit a record low 10.3%, according to the authority.

The latest

Saudi Arabia's unemployment rate dropped to 6.5% in the second quarter of 2026, down from 6.8% in the same quarter of 2025, the General Authority for Statistics said in data released Wednesday. The quarterly comparison was less favorable: the rate stood at 6.4% in the first quarter of this year, meaning joblessness edged up over three months even as the annual picture improved.

Details

• The headline figure: GASTAT put the second-quarter unemployment rate at 6.5%, a 0.3-percentage-point improvement on the 6.8% recorded in the second quarter of 2025. The authority released the data on Wednesday as part of its quarterly labor market reporting.
• The quarterly reading: Against the first quarter of 2026, when the rate was 6.4%, the second-quarter figure represents a slight increase rather than a decline. The authority did not attribute the quarter-on-quarter uptick to any specific factor.
• What GASTAT credits: The report tied the fall in Saudi unemployment to economic reforms, pointing to job localization policies and employment-generation measures. It said strategic labor market initiatives and the Human Capital Development Program had a significant impact on the result.
• The skills argument: According to the authority, those initiatives narrowed the gap between the skills job seekers hold and those employers require, while supporting sector development and opening investment opportunities. The report did not quantify the size of the remaining skills gap.
• Private sector headcount: The number of Saudis employed in the private sector rose above 2.5 million by the end of 2025, GASTAT said, presenting the figure as an outcome of the localization drive. The report gave no comparable baseline for earlier years.
• Women in the workforce: Unemployment among Saudi women reached a record low of 10.3%, the authority said, crediting social reforms aimed at workforce empowerment. It cited measures easing access to workplaces, childcare programs and other in-workplace support as drivers of the decline.
• Vision 2030 target: The latest annual Vision 2030 report showed the unemployment indicator hit its 2030 target of 7% ahead of schedule, by the end of 2024. Unemployment is one of the headline metrics written into the Vision document itself.

Background

Unemployment is a named indicator in Saudi Vision 2030, which set a 7% target for the end of the decade. Reaching that level by late 2024 left the government operating below its own benchmark, with subsequent quarterly readings measured against a goal already met.

Between the lines

The two comparisons in the same release pull in opposite directions. Year-on-year, the rate is down 0.3 points; quarter-on-quarter, it is up 0.1. With the Vision 2030 target of 7% already cleared in 2024, the policy question shifts from hitting a number to holding below it, which makes small quarterly moves harder to read as either progress or slippage.

What's next

The next GASTAT quarterly labor market release will show whether the move above 6.4% was a one-quarter fluctuation or the start of a trend, and whether the 10.3% female unemployment record holds.

Source: Saudi Gazette via ZAWYA, citing the General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT)