A number of economic experts have identified nine factors to drive unemployment rate down and stimulate the private sector to generate various job opportunities for young men and women. Giving support to small- and medium-scale enterprises in order to hire Saudis is one of these factors. Others include creating consortiums and alliances, eradicating tasattur practices, offering training programs to college students, requiring mega companies to train 20 percent of Saudi staff in them in order to fill senior and leading positions, establishing a unified government agency to provide various services to businesses, expanding business line of mega companies and venturing into new markets, providing job security to Saudis and exempting firms from the latest government decisions. The experts agree that these factors will reduce unemployment rate by five percent annually, Al-Madinah reported. Dr. Abdullah Al-Maghlouth, a member of the Saudi Economic Association, said the Ministry of Labor and Social Development's statistics showed a 12.1 percent increase in the unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2016. "The private sector should be encouraged to create jobs as this is the only way to reduce unemployment rate and keep it at an average level," he said. Dr. Salim Ba Ajaja, the chair of Economics School, Taif University, said one of the best solutions to this problem is to train college and technical institute graduates.
