Economics & Development

يقدم هذا التقرير رؤى جديدة حول التحول الذي شهده سوق العمل في المملكة العربية السعودية خلال العقد الماضي، مسلطًا الضوء على عدد من الإنجازات التي تحققت في إعادة تشكيل مخرجات التوظيف بعد تنفيذ رؤية السعودية 2030 والاستراتيجية الوطنية لسوق العمل. وبالاستناد إلى مجموعة بيانات غنية تقارن بين عام 2025 وخط الأساس السابق للرؤية في عام 2015، يستعرض التقرير أبرز الإصلاحات والسياسات التي قادتها وزارة الموارد البشرية والتنمية الاجتماعية، وكيف ساهمت هذه الإصلاحات في تحديث مؤسسات وسياسات سوق العمل، وتعزيز الشمول، وتمكين القطاع الخاص ليصبح القوة الناشئة المحركة لخلق فرص العمل الجديدة. كما يوثق التحليل التحولات الملحوظة نحو مزيد من الشمول، وزيادة التوظيف في القطاع الخاص، خاصة في المؤسسات متناهية الصغر والصغيرة والمتوسطة، إلى جانب تطوير مهارات القوى العاملة بشكل عام. ويستخلص التقرير دروسًا مهمة لدعم النمو الشامل والتنويع الاقتصادي، مقدمًا إرشادات عملية لصانعي السياسات في المنطقة وخارجها.

How do child penalties emerge within organizations? This paper studies how parenthood affects careers at the World Bank Group, exploiting variation in the timing of first childbirth among eventual parents in a staggered event-study difference-in-differences design. The paper estimates a 3.1 percent motherhood earnings penalty over the first six years after childbirth, primarily due to slower grade progression, while fathers experience no significant earnings loss. Mothers’ annual performance evaluations show no persistent deterioration. After childbirth, mothers take on fewer leadership responsibilities and travel less for work: they are less likely to initiate development projects and supervise external consultants. By contrast, the quality of realized outputs is not affected by parenthood. Mothers increasingly sort into positions with lower promotion potential, greater scope for home-based work and lower travel demands, where child penalties tend to be smaller. Together, these findings point to an advancement–flexibility trade-off: following childbirth, mothers shift away from responsibilities and positions conducive to career advancement, without persistent declines in observable performance.

Ratings of the Benin - Stormwater Management and Urban Resilience Project for Benin were as follows: Outcome was satisfactory; Bank performance was satisfactory; M&E quality was substantial. Lessons and recommendations are as follows. First, integrate land value capture (LVC) instruments at design to improve fiscal sustainability and catalyze private sector participation. The operation showed substantial land value appreciation in protected areas, confirming that well-targeted flood risk reduction can create a second dividend beyond avoided damages. Future projects should identify and deploy suitable LVC tools to capture part of the value created along upgraded drainage corridors, reinvest proceeds to sustain operations and maintenance, and crowd in private investment for land development, redevelopment, and complementary activities such as hospitality, retail, and recreation that can expand local employment and the municipal tax base. Second, address large-scale urban challenges through government-led, programmatic multi-donor platforms. Embedding financing within a credible, nationally led program enables alignment across partners, leverages concessional resources, shares implementation risk, and can reduce unit costs through competition and economies of scale. Future programs should strengthen day-to-day coordination mechanisms to anticipate and resolve operational bottlenecks and actively design pathways for private sector engagement, including infrastructure co-financing, land development, and long-term operations and maintenance arrangements. Third, treat hydrological risk knowledge as a first-order deliverable and build the institutional capacity to use it in parallel. The development of a city flood model and data platform should be accompanied by targeted training and resourcing at national and municipal levels to enable independent operation, updating, and routine application for decision-making. Clear data-sharing protocols should be established across sectors so that flood event records, infrastructure inventories, and damage assessments are systematically integrated; model outputs should be institutionalized in planning, investment appraisal, urban development, and land-use management; and standardized risk metrics, such as Annual Average Loss, should be developed to inform prioritization and to communicate outcomes.