Two Speeds in One Economy: Unemployment at 3.0 Percent, Net Foreign Direct Investment of 19.1 Billion Riyals and a Non-Oil Economy That Kept Growing Through Saudi Arabia's Second Quarter of 2026

Report summary

Saudi Arabia closes the second quarter of 2026 with unemployment at 3.0 percent of the labour force, from 3.1 percent in the first quarter and 3.2 percent a year earlier; with unemployment among Saudi nationals at 6.5 percent against 6.8 percent a year earlier; with a fourteenth consecutive quarter of net foreign direct investment inflows, at 19.1 billion riyals; and with a non-oil economy that grew 0.9 percent through a quarter in which oil activities contracted 24.8 percent. Those are the findings of the six releases published by the General Authority for Statistics between 8 and 30 September, and they are the reason this report is organised around one idea: the shock of the near halt in shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, in the Fund's phrase, has been absorbed mainly by the oil sector and the budget, and the rest of the economy has kept working through it. The headline is a real gross domestic product 4.7 percent smaller than in the second quarter of 2025. The contribution arithmetic shows where that came from. Oil activities subtracted 5.40 percentage points from annual growth, non-oil activities added 0.55, government activities added 0.07 and net taxes on products added 0.07, which sums exactly to the published 4.71 percent contraction.