Forecasting the Future of Labour Markets in the GCC
The Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB)
The Challenge
The Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) aims to promote worker welfare and migrant rights in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as they undergo rapid economic transformation, through its Gulf Sustain programme. To develop an appropriate advocacy strategy for governments and businesses in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar, IHRB needed to understand in detail each country’s economic diversification plans and their impact on the future labour demand for migrant workers, as well as on the quality of jobs and working conditions.
Our Approach
- Designed a mixed-methods research study combining remote stakeholder interviews and desk-based literature review.
- Leveraged our extensive network across government, business, and academia to identify and interview respondents.
- Identified seven priority economic sectors as the study’s focus, based on the three countries’ economic plans and relevance for migrant workers.
- Combined a detailed quantitative analysis of labour market data and interview insights to document our research findings.
What We Delivered
We prepared a detailed report for each country laying out:
- The broad socio-economic forces shaping the labour market with the likely impact on migrant workers’ overall employment prospects and working conditions.
- Deep-dives into each of the seven priority sectors, assessing future labour demand for migrant workers in each by skill level and occupation type.
- An advocacy strategy for the IHRB tailored for each country, based on the research findings.
- An executive summary of each report for public dissemination.
We also drafted a case study on Pakistan, a key source of migration to all three countries, as a complement to the country reports highlighting noteworthy trends from the perspective of migrants’ home countries.