Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Salary Guide 2022
Introduction
Welcome to the 2022 edition of the Cooper Fitch Salary Guide for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Despite the challenges we faced on a global scale due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Saudi economy and corresponding jobs market saw a significant recovery in 2021. An efficient vaccination programme was rolled out over the past year that has allowed restrictions to ease for both tourism, job seekers and businesses.
This year, at Cooper Fitch we based our salary guide around seven questions to improve the quality of data we are presenting to you. We spoke to over 600 organisations and asked them a range of questions about recruitment activity, salary trends and bonuses, to enable us to create the most accurate prediction for the year ahead.
Over the course of the pandemic, Saudi Arabia managed to continue with their giga and mega projects within development and tourism. We did see a dramatic reduction in employment activity with traditional employment sectors such as oil and gas, public sector, chemicals and real estate being disrupted due to border closures and restrictions as an effect of the pandemic. We have seen a gradual recovery in all of these sectors in Q3 this year, and in some cases we have seen record numbers of jobs being created with 19% growth in Q3 2021 vs Q2 2021 and 50% growth on Q3 2021 vs Q3 2021.
Introduction
The recruitment market for 2022 shows all the signs of an unprecedented year of growth. It will bring considerable pressure on the private sector to retain talent along with acquiring new talent as the drive for 2030 continues.
We see the greatest demand for talent will be within major government restructuring projects, large scale infrastructure projects, growth in the talent needs for the giga and mega projects and private sector growth.
This coupled with the developing sectors such as entertainment, culture, heritage and destination their will be a peak demand next year for talent.
Cooper Fitch has been based in the GCC since 1997 specialising in recruitment, executive search and HR advisory services.
We hope you find the insights we have presented in the following pages useful and interesting. We welcome any feedback as to how well the data reflects your specific situation and if you would like data specific to your market please do contact us directly.
Headcount in KSA
From those surveyed across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 29% of organizations said they made reductions to headcount in 2021 and 71% either made no changes or increased headcount. For 2022, 68% of KSA businesses will be increasing headcount with 30% of those increasing headcount by 10% or more, however, what we found more surprising is that 19% will be making reductions to their headcount in 2022.
Overview
Bonus Outlook
We asked organizations if they had paid bonuses in 2021, and if so by what structure, 68% said they did pay out bonuses within their organization. The data showed a 4% increase on the pay out of bonuses from 2020 (62%), this is still a generous pay out with 23% paying bonuses of 3-5months’ gross salary.
Companies were also asked if they were planning on paying out bonus schemes for 2022, 80% of the respondents said they will pay out bonuses with 30% of those paying 3-5 months’ gross salary and 49% paying 1-2 months’ gross salary.
Of those that responded only 14% stated they will not be paying out bonuses next year, however a strong recovery for bonus pay out of 80% shows a positive trajectory for next year.
Research Methodology
Cooper Fitch surveyed over 600 business leaders responsible for key decision making who are based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The survey asked various confidential questions focused on the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, recruitment activity, salary and bonus payment decisions for 2021 and 2022.
The data represented in our salary guide represents the responses we received from our clients and professional network and is representative of those responses exclusively.
About Cooper Fitch
Cooper Fitch provide professional services to organisations across the GCC on all matters talent-related. Driving business forward with top-tier talent, market and data insights and consulting services to better their employee attraction and retention rates.
We provide comprehensive compensation and benefits analysis designed to advance your competitive talent advantage, contact me for any specific requests or questions on this report.
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Trefor Murphy
Founder, CEO
tmurphy@cooperfitch.ae
+971 55 555 7283
Saudi Arabia Salary Guide 2022
The guides summarise our expectations for salaries and recruitment trends for 2022.
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