#labor

The 17%-to-36% decade: how Saudi women joined the formal economy

Female labor force participation moved from 17% in 2017 to 36.3% by Q1 2025. That's roughly 3.4 million additional women in the formal workforce in eight years — the largest such shift in any G20 economy this decade. The mechanism wasn't just one law. It was a coordinated stack of legal, financial, infrastructural, and cultural changes that compounded.

36.3%· Women in the workforce