The solution would seem obvious: Replace foreign workers with Saudis. Under a policy known as Saudization, the government has been trying to do exactly that since the mid-1980s. The state grants large interest-free loans to any citizen who wants to establish a private business, and offers salaries to students willing to undertake vocational training. The goal is to replace 60 percent of the foreign workers with Saudi nationals, in jobs ranging from taxi driver to administrative manager. But two decades into the policy, foreigners still make up more than 90 percent of all employees in the kingdom's private sector.
Until recently, every young Saudi thought he could go straight from school to an executive suite. "They imagined that it would be a society of all chiefs and no Indians," Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a leading real estate developer and entrepreneur, told the Arab News last year.
Now, say economists, something has to give, starting with an educational system that fails to meet the demands of modern industry. "The companies who come to us are looking for skilled workers, business grads, engineers, and technicians," said Nasser Salih al-Homoud, director of an unemployment office in Buraydah, a quiet farming center of 350,000 in central Saudi Arabia. Few Saudis qualify.
One of his clients is Abdulrahman al-Ali, 25. "I've been trying to find a job for a year," he told me. "When I submit an application, people tell me they'll call, but they never do." The problem is his schooling: Like many young Saudis, al-Ali has a bachelor's degree in Islamic philosophy.