Qatar’s job market continues to be heavily dominated by foreign workers, and there are as many as 16 expatriates for every Qatari in the workplace, official figures for the first quarter (Q1) of this year show. Data also suggest that women generally put in more hours a day in the workplace than men. The number of hours women worked in a week averaged 52 in Q1; the figure for men was 49. The situation in the construction sector was different as the average weekly work hours ranged between 52 and 56. Also, the state’s job nationalisation drive in the private sector seems to be bearing little fruit as the ratio of citizens in private employment climbed down to a meagre 0.88 percent in 2012. Data released by the national statistics agency for Q1 of 2013 say there were a total of 1.46 million workers in the country, of which 86,000 were citizens and the vast majority (1.38 million) were non-Qatari. The population of the country crossed the 1.9 million mark by the end of the first quarter of this year to reach a record 1.93 million (1,938,110, to be exact). Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA), while releasing the labour force figures, said that women accounted for barely 11.9 percent of the workforce. Younger people (those aged between 15 and 44 years) had a lion’s share (80.13 percent) in the workforce in Q1 this year. The QSA data also show that unemployment was not restricted to the Qatari community. While there were 1,357 people in the community looking for a job for the first time, this number in the expatriate communities was higher at 2,958 in Q1 this year. Women aged between 15 and 34 years accounted for the largest share of those looking for jobs in both the communities — Qataris and expatriates. There were a total of 80,763 students in the country last March-end, of whom 37,673 were Qatari. In both, the Qatari and expatriate communities, female students outnumbered their male counterparts. Interestingly, arguably for the first time, the national statistics office has released the number of housewives in the country, who totalled nearly 111,000 by the end of the first quarter. Of them, 26,664 were Qataris and 84,102 were expatriates. http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/qatar/235362-16-expats-for-every-qatari-in-workplace.html

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