Around 700,000 people commute into Dubai every day for work, new figures have revealed – which will come as no surprise to anyone who has been stuck in rush hour traffic in and around the emirate.
According to the annual survey of the labour force by Dubai Statistics Centre, 2.7 million people now work in Dubai with just over two million also living in the emirate. And it's bad news for anyone frustrated by long road delays – for the last three years Dubai has added an average of 110,000 workers annually.
The survey also shows that employment for 2017 hit 2,778,000, while the number of employed people of working age rose by one percentage point to reach 83.1 per cent.
More than half of the workforce is now female, at 53.6 per cent, or an increase of over four percentage points.
The Statistic Centre said the high rates “reflect the positive impact of government policies designed to promote gender balance and greater economic participation among Emirati men and women. “
It calculates that in Dubai there are 2,851 unemployed Emiratis – a rise of half a percentage point from 2016 to 3.4 per cent. For female Emiratis, the jobless rate reached 4.9 per cent, also a small rise of half a per cent.
For all workers, the unemployment rate was just 0.5 per cent last year, something the DSC says is “significantly lower than the global average.” Almost all of the unemployed were under the age of 40 and nearly four in ten were under 24.
The survey defines unemployment as relating to “an individual who is not working while he or she is capable of doing so and is actively looking for a job.”
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Construction is the biggest employer, with nearly 28 per cent of the workforce, while nearly one in five works in the wholesale and retail trade, and eight per cent in manufacturing.
Six out of ten workers hold a secondary education certificate or higher qualification, with 34 per cent having a bachelor’s degree or higher. Emiratis tend to have higher academic qualifications, with over half of women and around a third of men having a degree or higher.
Breaking down the figures for Emiratis further, the DSC says nearly a third are technicians and association professionals, and one in four are craftsmen.
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Gender equality in the workplace still 200 years away
It will take centuries to achieve gender parity in workplaces around the globe, according to a December report from the World Economic Forum.
The WEF study said there had been some improvements in wage equality in 2018 compared to 2017, when the global gender gap widened for the first time in a decade.
But it warned that these were offset by declining representation of women in politics, coupled with greater inequality in their access to health and education.
At current rates, the global gender gap across a range of areas will not close for another 108 years, while it is expected to take 202 years to close the workplace gap, WEF found.
The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracked disparities between the sexes in 149 countries across four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment.
After years of advances in education, health and political representation, women registered setbacks in all three areas this year, WEF said.
Only in the area of economic opportunity did the gender gap narrow somewhat, although there is not much to celebrate, with the global wage gap narrowing to nearly 51 per cent.
And the number of women in leadership roles has risen to 34 per cent globally, WEF said.
At the same time, the report showed there are now proportionately fewer women than men participating in the workforce, suggesting that automation is having a disproportionate impact on jobs traditionally performed by women.
And women are significantly under-represented in growing areas of employment that require science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills, WEF said.
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Company name: Almouneer
Started: 2017
Founders: Dr Noha Khater and Rania Kadry
Based: Egypt
Number of staff: 120
Investment: Bootstrapped, with support from Insead and Egyptian government, seed round of
$3.6 million led by Global Ventures
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Stars: Don Lee, Lee Jun-hyuk, Munetaka Aoki
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- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
- Do not drive outside designated lanes
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