Unemployment in the Kingdom has dropped at an annual rate of 5.5 percent but still 9.8 percent Saudis are jobless, according to a report compiled last year by General Department for Statistics and Information at the Ministry of Economy and Planning. The total number of unemployed Saudis stood at 437684, of which 239176 or 6.9 percent of total Saudi workforce were men and 177174 or 24.9 percent were women. The number of jobless expats stood at 21298 representing 0.40 percent of the total workforce in the Kingdom. Official sources at the Ministry of Economy and Planning said that 78 percent of the jobless Saudi women were university graduates, while 76 percent of unemployed Saudi men were high school graduates.
