Thanks to the bountiful oil under its desert sands and an equally plentiful supply of foreign labor - skilled and non-skilled - Saudi Arabia has enjoyed a booming economy. Prices of crude oil, nearly $100 a barrel for two years running, have largely spared Saudi Arabia the ill effects of the economic downturn that stalled many nations across the globe. Thanks to the prosperity, the kingdom has also survived, relatively unscathed, the seismic events of the Arab Spring, spurred in large part by feelings of economic deprivation and political marginalization among Arab youths.
But as more young adults come of age and expect jobs, as the potential for competing sources of energy emerge around the globe, leaders must plan for a more austere future, raising questions about the Saudi development model. Early casualties of this Saudi rethink include millions of expatriates who have flocked to a booming oil kingdom. While some have lived and worked in the kingdom for many years, the path to citizenship is notoriously inaccessible and most expatriates return to their home countries at some point.
Some observers have argued that the Saudi government's seemingly unlimited ability to spend billions to mitigate political, social or economic crises has been the key to its relative stability. The leaders strive to balance the still-predominant role that oil plays in the Saudi economy with long-term economic planning and demonstrate a commitment to human capital by spending lavishly on education, housing, healthcare and job-creation.
In various stages of planning across the kingdom are 24 industrial cities intended to provide thousands of jobs as well as housing for the estimated 400,000 Saudis who join the labor force every year. An estimated $ 134.1 billion is earmarked for water desalination and electricity-generation projects over the next decade. Some 130,000 Saudis study abroad as part of the King Abdullah Scholarship Program. More than half of the Saudis enrolled in more than 60 colleges and universities across the kingdom are women.
While this may seem like an ideal scenario - a state willing and able to develop its human capital to the fullest and an increasingly well-educated and eager population ready to take the helm of the biggest economy in the Middle East - there is one caveat: Almost 9 million residents of Saudi Arabia, or 32 percent of the population, are non-Saudis who perform everything from menial sanitation work to managing the nation's top banks. It's estimated that only about 20 percent of foreign workers are considered highly skilled; in addition, there are up to 2 million illegal migrants. In a society with leaders proclaiming young people are its "future," the role for immigrants is not clear.
Long before the Saudi population exploded - from 6.8 million in 1973 to more than 28 million currently - fields in the Eastern province began gushing oil that proved to be among the cheapest to extract in the world. As oil production and prices kicked into high gear by the early 1970s, Saudi Arabia underwent one of the most rapid transformations in modern history. From a sparsely populated, largely barren dessert, Saudi Arabia today boasts state-of-the-art highways, airports and communication networks.
Until fairly recently however, the country lacked the manpower necessary to implement this massive undertaking. This so-called "miracle in the desert" needed a massive influx of foreigners from across the Arab world, Africa and Asia to turn rapid development into reality.
