Jobs peospecs in the GCC countries
According to many Dubai based professional services recruiters, the end of this year’s employment in the UAE fall by 5% in the number of new jobs available in comparison with those of the third quarter of 2014.
Meanwhile, the latest UAE Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) indicated some loss of momentum in non-oil private sector output growth.
“In the United Arab Emirates, the Emirates NBD UAE Managers’ Index measures the performance of the non-oil private sector and is derived from a survey of 400 companies, including manufacturing, services, construction and retail. The Purchasing Managers Index is based on five individual indexes with the following weights: New Orders (30 percent), Output (25 percent), Employment (20 percent), Suppliers’ Delivery Times (15 percent) and Stock of Items Purchased (10 percent), with the Delivery Times index inverted so that it moves in a comparable direction. A reading above 50 indicates an expansion of the non-oil private sector compared to the previous month; below 50 represents a contraction; while 50 indicates no change. This page provides the latest reported value for – United Arab Emirates Manufacturing PMI – plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar, survey consensus and news. Content for – United Arab Emirates PMI – was last refreshed on Sunday, November 8, 2015.”
More specifically, hotel occupancy rates were lower than expected this summer, which may have been a further contributory factor in the drop not only in the quarter-to-quarter comparison but also in the 5 % fall in vacancies compared with the third quarter of 2014.
Low oil price continues to affect recruitment in the oil and gas and related sectors, in all areas but for certain downstream divisions, with many companies imposing hiring freezes and in some cases redundancies in the engineering, procurement and contracting sectors.
More apparent, growth in the property market has also slowed somewhat with new supply coming on stream and a consequent softening of pricing by 5 to 15%. Banks before this novel situation are coming up with new schemes of offering prolonged payment plans expecting this situation to be only a short passage.
This trend includes sales and marketing people who are in demand not only in all related building, infrastructure and property market generally but also in all transportation, retail and recreational areas. The banking serving all of these has also had moved up by 2 to 3 %.
In the construction sector however, new projects notably helped by investment in the relatively more attractive UAE and the slowdown of China’s growth, have recruited, although not as much as expected. In addition, a number of major infrastructure projects have recently been launched by the government and are being implemented; resulting in a momentum of jobs creation.
Employment is not only dependent on opportunities as offered by the economic conjecture of the GCC’s, but also by the behavioural attitudes of its inhabitants.
UAE nationals for instance believe, as per the latest report of The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) a management consulting firm, that job security and a company’s reputation are the two most important factors to consider when choosing a job whereas expatriate workers in the same country put appreciation for their work as their top priority when choosing a job and that, today, UAE nationals have a more career-oriented outlook, while expats tend to put more emphasis on intrinsic rewards.
In Oman, it has been some time since an ‘Omanisation plan’ was launched aimed at not only prioritising employment for all nationals entering the job market but to also reduce the country’s quasi-traditional reliance on expatriate workers. This plan has somehow come to a halt mainly due to the plan’s nationalisation targets that were found to being higher than what the country can achieve. According to most employment recruiters in the Middle East, the resulting effects of this is a gap. To manage and / or to mend this gap, it is according to these, crucial that an attitude and culture change is adopted with respect to the Omanisation plan in the country’s.
Creating a culture background that favours increases the productivity of Omani workers comes down to finding ways to entice them to attend work and share in the success of the company but employers in the construction industry still strongly believe that the target should be lowered to a more achievable level.
It is notoriously known that any GCC nationals come more than often with very little of the required experience, and lack knowledge of work ethics and sourcing nationals so as to meet Omanisation, and for that matter, Qatarisation, Emiratisation and / or Saudisation targets would present itself as the primary problem, retaining Omanis in the workplace is proving even more hazardous.
As far as the expatriate workers are concerned, the UAE after Qatar, has recently adopted two decrees. Human Rights Watch (HRW), well known around the world, has commended the UAE’s upcoming labour law, which is due to take effect in 2016.
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