A Targeted Industry Approach for Raising Quality Private-Sector Employment in Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is striving to develop its private sector and generate quality employment for Saudi citizens, and its efforts to increase Saudization -- the share of jobs filled by Saudis rather than expatriates -- have focused on upgrading the skills and education of Saudis and on implementing legal reforms to improve the business environment. This report takes a third approach: assessing the potential for Saudi Arabia to develop a specific industry -- food manufacturing -- as a means of increasing the demand for Saudi labor. In September 2018, researchers from the Decision Support Center of the Royal Court and from the RAND Corporation set out to explore how Saudi Arabia has developed industries successfully in the past and how it could develop a target industry that can provide quality private-sector employment. Ideally, the findings based on researching a specific industry can be applied to other industries and to Saudi Arabia's economy as a whole.