Qatar Economic Outlook Issue Number 13

Part 2 - Economic Performance 2017 - 2020 
 
 
65 
Impacts on Labor Market
As discussed previously in the first part of this 
report (section of "Census Development"), 
the State of Qatar has been attracting 
expatriate workers since 1971 from all over 
the world in all disciplines to meet the 
growing domestic demand for labor to work 
in all economic, production and service 
activities, making the market for Labor in 
Qatar is subject to the forces of economic 
supply and demand as shown briefly in boxes 
(2-3, 2-4). 
Evidence of this is that when the Covid-19's 
containment measures impacted the 
economic and social activities during 2020, 
the demand for labor for number of economic 
activities have experienced a major decline 
as shown in Figure (2-17)
26
. The level of the 
workforce in transport and warehousing 
activities decreased by 14.8%, followed by a 
decrease in employment in wholesale and 
retail trade by 9.5%, and then in real estate 
by 8.4%, and the reason is because they 
were among the activities most affected by 
the measures to contain Covid-19. 
However, despite the decline in the labor 
force in some government services activities 
26
To find out the nature of the data, check box (2-5)
(public administration, education and health), 
nonetheless, the number of recruited workers 
was greater than the number of laid-off 
surplus workers and retirees in this sector.
For more information about population and 
employment developments, the data of the 
quarterly bulletin of population statistics 
issued by the PSA related to the number of 
departures and arrivals to and from the State 
of Qatar during the period (July 2020 - 
September 2021), as shown in Figure (2-18) 
has been used to make a preliminary 
estimate of the number of decreases in the 
level of the workforce. It was found that the 
number of returnees to the country is lower 
than those who left by about 146,000 people 
during the second half of 2020, while the 
number of returnees to the country is higher 
than those who left by about 35,000 during 
the first three quarters of 2021. 
Thus, there is a possibility that the population 
fluctuation during 2020 and 2021 (from 2.81 
million in April 2020 to 2.38 million in July 
2021, before rising again to 2.69 million in 
November 2021) is due to the probability that 
those who have left during the second half of 
2020 was not intended to spend the usual 
annual leave outside Qatar either for tourism 
or family visits, but perhaps due to layoffs of