With oil at $70 a barrel, Saudi Arabian society is in danger of capsizing under the weight of its own wealth

The oil-fuelled behemoth of the Saudi economy seems to have little in common with the rickety finances of most African nations. Yet unofficial estimates put the Gulf state's unemployment rate at 25 per cent of the male population - a level you would find in Ghana or Mozambique.

In Saudi Arabia, however, the problem is not a lack of jobs but what jobs fastidious young Saudis, raised in an affluent leisure culture, are prepared to do. With under-motivated workers, the country is utterly dependent on cheap imported labour. Between half and two-thirds of the workforce is made up of non-Saudis from the Asian subcontinent, Indonesia, the Philippines or less wealthy Arab countries; they are employed as cleaners or factory workers.

The government is reluctant to acknowledge the scale of the problem in public. Judicious redefinition of the "workforce" puts the official unemployment rate at a modest 8.8 per cent. But it is making desperate attempts to wean the country from its addiction to imported labour, and has launched a "Saudisation" programme to cut foreign workers to less than one-fifth of the workforce by 2013. The initiative has already run into trouble. The labour minister, Ghazi al-Qusaibi, announced on 2 April that Saudisation targets would be virtually abandoned for workers in auto workshops, laundries, bakeries and petrol stations, as well as for tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, mechanics, farmhands and truckers - all occupations that Saudis consider to be "jobs for Indians".

But with a quarter of a million young men (and potentially as many women) entering the job market each year, there are simply not enough "clean" jobs to go around. On 21 April, 10,000 jobseekers turned up at the passport agency in Riyadh, quarrelling, punching and kicking one another in their rush to secure one of 500 clerical vacancies. And when the oil money begins to run dry, young Saudis may find themselves squabbling over the jobs at present filled by immigrant workers.

Couch-potato-dom is also taking its toll on the nation's waistlines. A ministry of health conference announced last month that the rapid rise in living standards over the past 40 years has created an "obesity nation" to rival the United States. Fifty-one per cent of Saudi women and 45 per cent of Saudi men are now clinically obese, and diabetes rates are rising sharply. The government's new Weigh Your Life campaign proposes a cure, encouraging healthy eating and exercise for children, but, like Saudisation, it has foundered on social priorities. Despite the government's best efforts, schools do not allow physical education for girls, as conservative clerics consider it inappropriate.

Saudi Arabia by numbers

25.6: population (in millions) in 2005 . . . 40.5: projected population (in millions) in 2025 . . . 86: percentage of population living in urban areas . . . 37.3: percentage of population aged 0-14 (compared to 17.9 in the UK) . . . 25: percentage of world's proven petroleum reserves . . . 5.5: millions of foreign workers in the oil industry . . . 0: percentage of population living below poverty line . . . 340.6: GDP in billions of dollars . . . 50: percentage value of a woman's testimony in court against a man's . . . 12 to several thousand: lashes permitted under sharia law . . . 100: percentage of Saudi citizens who are officially Muslim

Sohani Crockett

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