Business & Money | Saturday 5 December, 2015 12:50 pm |

A study by the Communications and Information Technology Commission has said that Saudis form 50 percent of the total cadres in the field of information and communications technology.

It said most of them work in large organizations, with 250 employees and more, and government departments which consider themselves as the largest employers. The percentage of these Saudis go down in small- and medium-sized establishments.
The study included 413 opinion leaders and decision-makers in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector and in establishments in the private and public sectors in the Kingdom. 

The study also stated that 76 percent of these IT employees are under 40 years of age. It stated that this is a high figure compared to the 59 percent of the same age category for those working on the management side of these organizations. 
The Information and Statistics Department showed that economically active populations in the Kingdom reached 11.29 million including 165,000 expert cadres in IT, or 1.5 percent of those who are economically active. It expects the annual accumulation to increase by 9 percent in the next two years to 213,000 by 2017.
The study moved to the gap between supply and demand in employment in the ICT sector as it expects that colleges, universities, training institutes and employment facilities to increase to 23,000 new experts between 2015 and 2017, but despite this the gap will increase according to expected figures. It may surpass the demand for specialist cadres in ICT at 8,400.

The CIT Commission expects in its study that the gap will increase to 10,4000 experts by 2017.
This study shows that the cumulative gap between supply and demand will widen according to what is expected and will reach to 37,000 experts in the period from 2014 till 2017.