ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the process of economic growth in Saudi Arabia and focuses especially on the role of expatriate labor, using data from published sources only. It shows that the trends established in the late 1970s will most probably continue through the 1980s barring, of course, some major political crisis which would alter many of the assumptions made. The chapter explores the factors involved in determining the size and dynamics of the labor market in Saudi Arabia. At the heart of the difficulty of any attempt to aggregate public and private employment, as well as across several educational or occupational levels to reach the market at large is the problem of segmentation in the labor market. Segmentation of the labor market was also proposed as the explanation of the simultaneous coexistence of chronic unemployment and skill shortages in Egypt and general labor shortages in the oil countries.
