Salary satisfaction running low across Mideast

SALARY SURVEY: The Bayt survey revealed widespread dissatisfaction with salaries across the Middle East.

Salary satisfaction is running low across the Middle East, with just seven percent of residents in the UAE highly satisfied with their remuneration, according to research conducted by job site Bayt.com in conjunction with YouGov.

The picture around the Gulf is similarly bleak with each of the GCC countries registering the same level of dissatisfaction regarding their salary.

The picture around the region in terms of what level of salary people receive varies widely, the survey found.

The Middle East Salary Survey is designed to look at the current levels of wages and benefits in the region, and to gauge employee opinion and satisfaction levels, and how these have kept pace with the cost of living.

Bayt.com's regional manager Amer Zureikat said: "The relevance of such data increases manifold during a time like this - a global economic crisis - as it gives an up-to-date indication of employee sentiment, which can be used to compare people's attitudes and opinions during other financial cycles."

The data for the Salary Survey is collated in part by looking at whether average salary increases were in-line with the average rise in the cost of living.

The picture was very clear that the average salary increase did not reflect the rise in the cost of living across all of the countries. In the UAE, respondents indicated that living costs had increased by 37 percent while the average salary increase was just 15 percent.

The biggest disparity in the increase in cost of living and salary raise was in Jordan, where salaries increased by 15 percent compared to the 39 percent increase in living costs.

The survey also looked at what percentage of their salary people manage to save each month.

The majority of all respondents manage to save between 1-5 percent while a quarter of all respondents said they managed to save none.

The biggest savers were in Oman, Qatar and Bahrain, with 33 percent, and 30 percent respectively saving more than 21 percent of their monthly salary.

Overall, the best savers are in Bahrain and Oman, where 83 percent of residents save at least some of their salary.

Those saving the least were in Jordan, where just 54 percent saved some of their monthly wages. Just over one fifth of residents in the UAE, 22 percent, saved between 1-5 percent of their salary.

"These figures reveal that even though some people receive much higher salaries in some countries than others, it doesn't correlate that these high earners save more money, which might have been expected," said Nassim Ghrayeb, CEO, YouGov.

The survey also highlighted the level of salary satisfaction in terms of industry, with the most highly satisfied workers were found in the oil, gas and petrochemicals sector.

The industries which provided least salary satisfaction to workers were education and academia, government and civil service and transport and travel.

The study additionally revealed that across the Middle East, 77 percent of residents felt they have been hard hit by the global economic crisis, with just 24 percent of people in the UAE stating they have felt no effects.

Asked their feelings about the current economic climate in terms of the labour market, almost a quarter of respondents said they feel quite pessimistic.

Egypt and the UAE were the gloomiest countries surveyed with 30 percent and 29 percent feeling down about the future, while Oman and Bahrain's respondents were most optimistic.

Data for the 2008/2009 Salary Survey was collected online in December 2008 and January 2009 with 13,881 respondents across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.

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READERS' COMMENTS

satisfaction survey
Posted by Nicola, Dubai, UAE on Thursday 19 February 2009 at 14:08 UAE time

I think if this survey was repeated over the next 2 weeks, there would be a significant shift in responses. I can't imagine there is anyone who hasn't been affected in some way or another by the current economic situation. I am even surprised that the results were this positive in Dec / Jan.

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