Ageism

What ageism is

Ageism, in employment, is basing a decision about hiring or work on a person’s age, or on what is assumed about people of that age, rather than on what they can do. It runs in both directions: against someone judged too old for a role and against someone judged too young for it.

In Saudi Arabia it has a place in the text of the law rather than being left to practice, so the law comes first, followed by the ways age enters decisions through words that never name it.

Where it sits in the Labor Law: Article 61, item 4

Article 61 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) lists the duties of employers, and its fourth item was added by Royal Decree No. M/44 dated 8/2/1446H, in force from 19 February 2025. The exact wording carries the point, so it is given in Arabic:

«أن يمتنع عن القيام بكل ما من شأنه إبطال أو إضعاف تطبيق تكافؤ الفرص أو المعاملة في الاستخدام والمهنة، سواء من خلال الاستبعاد أو التفريق أو التفضيل بين المتقدمين للعمل أو العاملين لديه على أساس العرق أو اللون أو الجنس أو السن أو الإعاقة أو الحالة الاجتماعية أو أي شكل من أشكال التمييز الأخرى.»

In our own rendering, which is not an official translation, the item requires the employer to refrain from anything that would nullify or weaken equality of opportunity or treatment in employment and occupation, whether through exclusion, differentiation or preference between applicants for work or the employer’s workers, on the basis of race, colour, sex, age, disability, marital status or any other form of discrimination.

Three points in this item must be read as part of it, not cut out of it:

• Three acts, not one. The text names exclusion, differentiation and preference. Preference is covered just as exclusion is, so favouring an age group falls under the item as much as shutting one out.
• Two populations, not one. The text covers applicants for work as well as the employer’s workers. So the item reaches the hiring decision itself, not only the terms of work afterwards. Reading it as a rule about existing workers alone drops half of it.
• An open list of grounds. It names race, colour, sex, age, disability and marital status, then adds any other form of discrimination. The six named grounds are not presented as exhaustive.

The item sits among the employer’s duties towards all workers in the Labor Law, not in a chapter devoted to a particular group. It is a general duty, and age is one of the grounds it lists. The same decree added items 5 and 6 to Article 61 of the Labor Law, on housing and transport, which are covered in the guide to housing and transport allowances in the employment contract.

The item imposes a duty to refrain on the employer and does not itself set a penalty for breaching it. The penalty comes from somewhere other than Article 61 of the Labor Law.

The penalty comes from the Schedule of Violations, not from Article 61 of the Labor Law

The penalty is set in the Schedule of Violations and Penalties (جدول المخالفات والعقوبات) for the Labor Law and its Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية), issued by Ministerial Decision No. 112377 dated 21/8/1447H (9 February 2026). Its first category, general violations applying to all activities, includes a row covering any form of discrimination on grounds of sex, disability, age and the like: in conditions of work, in pay between men and women for work of equal value, or any act that nullifies equal opportunity.

The Schedule classes this violation as grave, and the fine has three amounts according to the size of the establishment. The three amounts are stated together, and no single one is quoted on its own:

• An establishment with 20 workers or fewer: SAR 1,000.
• From 21 to 49 workers: SAR 2,000.
• 50 workers or more: SAR 3,000.

The row also carries a multiplier: the fine is multiplied by the number of cases. We found nothing, in the sources we reviewed, that settles what counts as a case under this particular row, so we do not state it, and we build no calculation of a total payable on it.

Discrimination therefore involves two instruments, not one: the duty to refrain in the Labor Law, and the fine in the Schedule of Violations and Penalties. Attributing the fine to Article 61 of the Labor Law is an error of source even when the amount is right.

The account above reports the Labor Law and the Schedule issued by Ministerial Decision No. 112377; it is not legal advice, and the text of those instruments is the reference wherever an account of them differs from it. We found no named procedure, in the sources we reviewed, specific to someone who believes they have been discriminated against because of age, and no set period for pursuing one. Anyone who needs that, or needs to know what counts as a case under the multiplier, should go to the competent authority and to the text of the Schedule itself.

Age enters decisions through words that never mention it

Age does not have to be written down as a requirement to enter a decision. It can come in through descriptions that read as neutral:

• Graduation year in screening. It is one of the things that enter a CV screening decision without being named as a reason, and writing it into a Boolean search string brings the same unstated preference into the search.
• A ceiling on years of experience, the heaviest of these in its effect, as the calculation below shows.
• Descriptions of energy, vitality or familiarity with modern tools, which are attributed to a stage of life and written as if they described the role.
• Overqualified. A word used in reply to the more experienced applicant, and what can lie behind it is a question of pay that could be stated openly.
• Fit with the team. The description can reproduce the team as it already is, age included.

A worked example: a ceiling on experience

A ceiling on experience is written as a description of the work and functions as an age band. If people usually start work after graduating at around 22, an advertisement asking for zero to 5 years of experience lands on an age band of 22 to 27, and one asking for 5 to 10 years lands on 27 to 32. The width of the experience band is the width of the age band, unless room is left for people who changed careers.

Its effect on the list can be calculated. Take an advertisement with 400 applicants, for a role that actually requires 4 years of experience:

• Those meeting the four years: 150 people.
• Among them, those with more than 10 years: 120 people, which is 30% of all applicants.

If the advertisement sets a ceiling at ten years, 120 of the 150 qualified applicants are removed, 80% of those who meet the real requirement, and 30 remain. The ceiling added no requirement to the role; it removed four fifths of the people who meet it. The figures are assumed to show the calculation. We also put no figure on how common ageism is in the Saudi market: what circulates on that is outside our sources, so we do not repeat it.

A ceiling can be written for a purpose left unsaid: avoiding an applicant expected to ask for more pay, to stay only briefly in the role, or to be hard for someone less experienced to supervise. Each of these is a question that can be stated in its own words and examined. The first is a matter of the pay range in the salary structure, the second a question put to every applicant in a structured interview, and the third an arrangement within the team, to be dealt with there. Loading all three onto a ceiling on years of experience hides every one of them and produces a decision whose maker cannot say why it was made.

This is where the subject meets hiring based on skills, which separates what a role cannot be done without from everything else, and treats the first kind of condition as one that excludes before anything is examined. A ceiling on experience is a condition of that kind, and it has to be shown to be necessary for performance. Years of experience are an attribute of the person, which is also why they have no place in the grade descriptions used in job classification.

The other direction: those judged too young

Item 4 of Article 61 of the Labor Law names age as a ground without limiting it to either end, so it covers both. The form that falls on younger people is less talked about and more readily accepted, because it is phrased as care for the work:

• Requiring years the role does not need, so someone able to do the work is excluded for not having reached a number.
• Withholding decisions from the person doing the work, so they are asked to deliver and denied the authority to decide how.
• Delaying nomination for promotion until a length of service unrelated to readiness has passed, which sits in contrast to the concept of employees with high potential.

The premise is the same at both ends: inferring ability from a number of years instead of measuring the ability. The two differ in the direction of the inference, not in its kind.

What falls outside it

Each of the following involves a condition that can touch age, and each stands apart because of where the condition comes from or what it measures:

• A legal requirement for the occupation itself. Where a competent authority sets a condition for practising a particular kind of work, it is taken from its source, and it is not the employer’s judgement.
• A standard of ability applied to everyone. A role that needs physical capacity measures all applicants against one announced standard, as a physical ability test does. The standard falls on the ability, not on age, and an older applicant may pass it while a younger one fails.
• Pay as a stated constraint. An organisation whose range cannot accommodate what an applicant asks for says so in those words, and that is a reason that can be stated and examined.

An announced programme for a particular group, such as a graduate programme, is harder to place. It has to be read in light of item 4 itself, because preference is named there alongside exclusion, and we found nothing, in the sources we reviewed, that settles where recruitment programmes aimed at an age group stand under item 4 of Article 61 of the Labor Law, so we do not settle it either.

Ageism does not show in a single decision

A single decision can always be explained; a pattern cannot be explained away to the same degree. The remedy is to review outcomes in aggregate and ask whether a pattern repeats in who is excluded.

Three things are worth looking at: the spread of applicants by years of experience against the spread of those hired; who is nominated for training and development programmes; and who is selected when the organisation is restructured. The third is the most dangerous, because it is decided quickly and against criteria written after the choice rather than before.

What comes before all of this is to write the criteria before seeing the applicants, to separate requirements from preferences, and to test every limit in an advertisement with one question: is it needed for the work, or merely customary?

Related terms

• Structured Interview
• Boolean Search
• Job Classification
• Salary Structure
• Succession Planning