Kuwaitis earn nearly five times as much as expats

• 83% of Kuwaitis work in government
• Most expats are non-Gulf Arabs
• Men paid 40% more than women

Kuwaiti nationals earn nearly five times as much as their expatriate colleagues, and more than four in every five Kuwaitis work for the government, data from the Central Statistics Administration has revealed.

Of 450,000 working Kuwaitis at the end of September, 375,000, or 83 percent, were in the public sector, with the remainder in the private sector, said the local Al-Shall Consulting Group, which analysed the statistics.

Excluding nearly 740,000 domestic servants, expatriates in both sectors totalled around 2.1 million, Al-Shall said.

The average monthly wage of a Kuwaiti across both the public and private sectors was around KD1,571 ($5,184) a month, against KD343 for an expatriate, 4½ times less.

In the public sector, the figures were KD1,614 a month for a Kuwaiti and KD762 for expatriates, two times less.

In the private sector, the gap was even wider at KD1,625 for Kuwaitis and KD311 for expatriates, more than five times less.

The data also showed that working Kuwaiti men are paid about 40 percent more than working Kuwaiti women, or around KD1,886 a month, against KD1,345 for women.

Most expatriate workers in Kuwait are Arabs from outside the Gulf region and nationals from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

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Like elsewhere in the world’s largest oil-producing region, Gulf Arab economies have been built on relatively cheap labour from outside, including other Arabs, the Indian subcontinent and the Philippines. 

In the UAE emirate of Dubai, the local national population accounts for less than 10 percent of nearly 4 million people.