The global rise of non-standard forms of employment (NSE) and gig work creates opportunities and challenges for the labor market and requires public policy responses to realize their benefits and mitigate their adverse effects. Evidence on the NSE impact on firms and workers reaffirms the need...

This report, written at the request of the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC) in Saudi Arabia, explores the importance of addressing care challenges in Saudi Arabia. The report examines the size and composition of the care workforce, identifies the population of care...

Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 promotes women's skill development and their advancement in the labor market. Since 2017, Saudi Arabia has seen the fastest progress in reducing barriers to women's access to labor markets by advancing reforms regarding guardianship, mobility, protection of women in...

Kuwaiti women working in Kuwait's civil service earn, on average, 18 percent less than Kuwaiti men. Using a unique data set of all Kuwaiti nationals working in Kuwait's civil service, this paper analyzes the relationship between wages, gender, and the relative dominance of women in occupations...

The schooling disruption caused by COVID-19 in Kuwait is among the longest in the world. Using the similarities between the schooling disruptions due to the Gulf War and the schooling disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this note shows that students in school during the COVID-19 pandemic...

This paper exploits a rich dataset from various administrative sources to study short- and medium-term labor market outcomes of vocational education and training graduates in Saudi Arabia. It examines five cohorts of graduates from institutes operated by the Technical and Vocational Training...

This report is one of the main deliverables outlined in the legal arrangement of September 10, 2019, between the General Secretariat of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development (GS-SCPD) in Kuwait and the World Bank. A separate overview report is also available. The social contract in...

This paper estimates the long-term impacts of schooling disruptions on private returns to schooling in Kuwait. It applies an instrumental variables approach to estimate the private returns to schooling, using unique civil service payroll data, with Kuwaiti students' exposure to the Gulf War...