ABU DHABI // Employment in the emirate has doubled over the past seven years – but women are still only a small fraction of the workforce, government figures show.
The number of people employed rose from 786,738 in 2005 to 1,577,013 last year – a 100.45 per cent increase.
In the last year of statistics alone, there was a 12.4 per cent increase between 2011, when there were 1,403,400 workers, and last year.
But male expatriates continued to dominate the workforce, the Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi’s (Scad) 2013 statistical yearbook shows.
Of the 1,577,013 people working in the emirate last year, 1,344,424 million were men and just 232,589 were women (14.75 per cent).
Of those employed, 25 to 29-year-olds made up the largest share of the workforce (24.5 per cent), followed by 30 to 34-year-olds (20.8 per cent) and 35 to 39-year-olds (14.9 per cent).
Butti Al Qubaisi, the director general of Scad, said the statistics showed that about a third of expatriate employees were in the construction sector, almost all of them men.
Service and sales jobs were also highly populated by expatriate workers.
The most common job for female expatriates was a teacher.
The majority of Emiratis worked in public administration roles, while about one in seven had managerial roles.
Most Emiratis worked in government roles (87.6 per cent), while expatriates were more likely to work in the private sector (76.7 per cent).
The unemployment rate last year was 3.2 per cent – up from 2.8 per cent in 2011 but down from 3.5 per cent in 2005.
Women were more likely to be unemployed, the figures show.
For both men and women, the 20 to 24-year-old age group had the highest share of unemployment.
jbell@thenational.ae