KUWAIT: Kuwait’s Vision 2035 is an ambitious plan aimed at the overall development of the country. One of the most important aspects the government should pay attention to is “creating an alignment between the educational output and the job market needs”. As 30,000 high school graduates are gearing up towards the next stage of their lives, according to Ministry of Education numbers back in September, it is only paramount for the government to realize that the job market must absorb graduates of universities in a few years to come, establishing actual jobs that would contribute to the development vision.

In this regard, the Cabinet had taken a decision in August 2022 to establish a committee that would look into the needs of the job market, coordinating with government entities to make sure that graduates would fit in the slot of newly created jobs. Authorities, namely the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education, had also expressed a desire to provide students with scholarships in Kuwait and abroad for majors that would add to the development vision of the country once graduates become eligible for a job.

Speaking to KUNA, acting dean of admission and registering at Kuwait University (KU), Dr Fadhel Aziz said that the mechanism of admission would be explained to eager students in the upcoming period, especially the part about the job market’s needs and new majors created to cover future careers. KU launched in July the “Here Begins Your Future” exhibition at the Avenues Mall as a step to inform students and enable them to take informed decisions.

The Civil Service Commission (CSC), on its part, revealed that in June around 24,000 jobs were announced, while the annual number of grades for petitioners and those resigning reached 6,500. Since 2023, there are 28,000 awaiting jobs, and if the number does not decrease in the upcoming few years, there would be an issue, especially with the aforementioned 30,000 high school graduates who would probably graduate in four years at minimum, inflating the future numbers of job seekers in return.

The CSC also launched a workshop recently focusing on the new mechanisms and job descriptions for engineering and media jobs, connecting that to the available future jobs within the development vision mainframe. This adds to the efforts of the Public Authority for Manpower which recently issued statistics on the job market and career seekers. In the statistics for those seeking jobs in the public and private sectors annually between 2001 and 2024, the authority revealed that it was at its highest in 2021, when a staggering 32,326 individuals applied, while the lowest was in 2024 with only 4,036.

On the surface, the statistics displayed extreme fluctuations, which should be addressed before they have a negative impact on the development plan. The Manpower Authority also issued a list of top private sector entities employing Kuwaiti citizens, indicating that the banking sector topped the list with 64 percent, followed by telecommunications at 60 percent, finance at 40 percent, and petrochemicals at 30 percent.

The Trending Economics—a website providing users with accurate information for 196 countries, including historical data and forecasts for more than 20 million economic indicators, exchange rates, stock market indexes, government bond yields, and commodity prices—said that Kuwait registered its higher unemployment rate in 2020, reaching around 3.3 percent. The source, using data for economic indicators based on official sources, added that the unemployment numbers decreased by 2021 to 2.8 percent and continued the trend in 2022, settling at 2.5 percent and rising slightly to 2.65 percent in 2023. — KUNA