Wage differentials in the Saudi Private Sector Available to Purchase

This paper investigates the factors behind wage differentials in the largest 100 Saudi Arabian companies. In addition to these companies’ data that were published in 1999, a questionnaire was distributed to a random sample of the employees in these companies to collect supplementary personal data. Stepwise regression was then used to examine the relationship between wages (on the logarithmic scale) and several independents variables measuring various characteristics of both the companies and the workers. It was found that the worker’s education and experience and the company’s sales, capital, assets, location and legal framework were among the most important variables affecting wages.