Jordan Times
Monday, January 14, 2008
Around 0.6m Jordanians work
abroad
By Mohammad Ghazal
AMMAN - The number of Jordanians working abroad is estimated at 600,000 to
670,000, the majority of whom work in Saudi Arabia, the Department of Statistics
(DoS) announced Sunday.
Kamal Saleh, assistant director of DoS, told The Jordan Times that the bulk of
these expatriates work in Saudi Arabia followed by the United Arab Emirates,
Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and other Arab Gulf countries.
“The number of Jordanians working abroad has been increasing over the past few
years due to a huge demand for skilled and highly qualified workers in the
Gulf,” Saleh told The Jordan Times on Sunday.
The majority of Jordanian expatriates work as technicians and experts in various
professions in several sectors such as engineering, medicine, pharmaceuticals,
IT, education and others, according to Saleh.
Saleh said the creation of labour offices at the Kingdom’s embassies recently in
Gulf countries has also helped Jordanians find jobs there.
According to the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ), the overall amount of workers’
remittances during the first three quarters of 2007 stood at about JD1.8
billion.
The revenues from expatriates’ money transfers for the entire 2006 amounted to
about JD2 billion, according to the CBJ website. Jordan’s GDP in 2006 stood at
$12.5 billion.