Employment of Minors

What employment of minors means

Employment of minors is the set of rules in Part Ten of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل), headed the employment of young persons (تشغيل الأحداث). Part Ten sets the minimum working age, closes certain kinds of work to a young person, limits their hours and the times at which they may work, and requires documents before employment begins and a notification and a register afterwards. It runs from Article 161 to Article 167 of the Labor Law.

The definition comes first, because every provision after it depends on it. Article 2 of the Labor Law defines a young person (الحدث) as a person who has completed fifteen years of age and has not reached eighteen. So a person who has completed fifteen is a young person, and a person who has not completed fifteen is not a young person under that definition. The rules on the employment of minors are written for the band between those two ages, and a person below fifteen falls under the minimum age rule set out next.

The minimum age for the employment of minors: fifteen

Paragraph 1 of Article 162 of the Labor Law provides that no person who has not completed fifteen years of age may be employed, and that such a person is not permitted to enter the workplace. The same paragraph allows the Minister, by decision, to raise this age in certain industries, in certain regions or for certain categories of young persons.

Paragraph 2 of Article 162 of the Labor Law is a power given to the Minister, not a permission given by the statute. It provides that the Minister may permit the employment of persons aged between 13 and 15 in light work, on two conditions: the work must not be likely to harm their health or growth, and it must not disrupt their attendance at school or their participation in guidance or vocational training programmes, or weaken their ability to benefit from the education they receive.

In the sources we reviewed, we found no decision of the Minister issued under paragraph 2 of Article 162 of the Labor Law. Article 33 of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية), issued to implement Article 162 of the Labor Law, states the prohibition in absolute terms: a person who has not completed fifteen may not be employed in any circumstances, save the cases set out in Article 167 of the Labor Law.

What can be stated from all of this is therefore precise. The minimum working age in the Kingdom is fifteen. The Labor Law reserves to the Minister an exception for light work between 13 and 15, and the Implementing Regulation states the prohibition below fifteen in absolute terms, subject only to Article 167 of the Labor Law. It cannot be said that a person aged thirteen may be employed in the Kingdom.

It cannot be said either that the minimum working age is fourteen. The figure of fourteen in Article 167 of the Labor Law is the lower limit of a narrow exemption for education and training, not a second working age, and it is explained below.

Work closed to minors

Article 161 of the Labor Law provides that young persons may not be employed in hazardous work or harmful industries, or in professions and jobs likely to expose their health, safety or morals to danger, by reason of their nature or of the circumstances in which they are performed. The Minister determines those jobs, industries and professions by decision.

Article 32 of the Implementing Regulation, issued to implement Article 161 of the Labor Law, gives a list whose wording makes it indicative rather than complete: the items are introduced by the Arabic word ومنها, meaning that they are among the jobs covered. They include work in mines or quarries and the extraction of minerals from underground; industries that carry health hazards; arduous work (الأعمال الشاقة); work that may expose a young person to physical danger through operating high risk machinery, such as sharp cutting machines; and any work whose place and conditions may expose a young person to moral, psychological or physical problems.

That one word prevents these five from being presented as the list of work banned for minors in Saudi Arabia. In the sources we reviewed, we also found no copy of the decision of the Minister to which Article 161 of the Labor Law refers, so no complete list is attributed to it.

Working hours for minors, and the ceiling that has no exception

Article 164 of the Labor Law sets the hours of a young person in four rules:

• The daily ceiling. It is six hours of actual work a day in every month of the year, except Ramadan, when actual working hours may not exceed four.
• The break. Hours are arranged so that a young person does not work more than four consecutive hours without one or more periods for rest, food and prayer, each of not less than half an hour.
• The time at the workplace. A young person may not remain at the workplace for more than seven hours.
• The days on which work is barred. A young person may not be employed on weekly rest days, on Eid days and official holidays, or during annual leave.

The last sentence of Article 164 of the Labor Law is the operative one, and it can drop out of a summary: the exceptions in Article 106 of the Labor Law do not apply to young persons. Article 106 of the Labor Law lets an employer set aside the rules on working hours and the weekly rest in cases such as annual stocktaking, preparing the budget, liquidation, closing the accounts and meeting abnormal pressure of work, subject to a ceiling of ten actual hours a day or sixty a week. None of that is available for a young person. The six hour ceiling has no exception, and no overtime can be worked above it.

That is the practical difference between the hours of a young person and the general rules on working hours and the weekly rest that apply to other workers. The difference lies not only in the size of the ceiling, but in the fact that the ceiling for a young person has no way round it. The leave every worker has on Eid days and official holidays is covered under public holiday leave.

Night work by minors: a ban with four exceptions

Article 163 of the Labor Law prohibits employing young persons during a night period of not less than twelve consecutive hours, except in the cases the Minister determines by decision.

The exceptions exist, and they are in Article 34 of the Implementing Regulation. Young persons may be employed during periods of the night in an establishment where the work is confined to members of the family; in work at vocational schools and training centres; in work at bakeries, except between 9 pm and 4 am; and in cases of force majeure and emergencies.

The bakery case is an exception within an exception. Bakeries are outside the night ban except between 9 pm and 4 am. Stating one half without the other reverses the rule. A statement that young persons are barred from night work without exception leaves out Article 34 of the Implementing Regulation altogether.

Documents, notification and the register in the employment of minors

Article 165 of the Labor Law requires the employer, before employing a young person, to obtain from them:

1. A national identity card or an official birth certificate.
2. A certificate of health fitness for the work required, issued by a specialist doctor and attested by a health authority. These are two steps, not one, and either without the other does not satisfy the provision.
3. The consent of their guardian (ولي الأمر).

The same provision requires these documents to be kept in the file of the young person. They sit alongside what the employee file holds, as an addition to it, not as a substitute for it.

Article 166 of the Labor Law adds two duties. The employer must notify the competent labour office of every young person it employs within the first week of their employment, and must keep at the workplace a special register of young workers showing the young person’s name, their age, the full name of their guardian, their place of residence and the date of their employment. Those five particulars are the ones the provision lists, and the one week deadline is set in the Labor Law itself, not in a decision.

The obligations on documents, notification and the register are set out in more detail in our guide to work prohibited for juveniles and their employment documents.

What the rules on employment of minors do not reach

Article 167 of the Labor Law provides that the provisions of Part Ten do not apply to work done by children and young persons in schools for the purposes of general, vocational or technical education, or in other training institutions. They do not apply either to work done in establishments by persons who have reached at least fourteen, where that work is carried out on conditions the Minister lays down and forms an essential part of one of the following: an educational or training course whose principal responsibility rests with a school or a training institution; a training programme carried out wholly or mostly in an establishment, where the competent authority has approved it; or a guidance or orientation programme intended to make it easier to choose an occupation or a type of training.

Two points must not be lost here. First, fourteen is not a second working age: it is the lower limit of a narrow exemption whose conditions are for the Minister to set, and in the sources we reviewed, we found no decision setting them. Second, the exemption is from Part Ten, that is from Articles 161 to 166 of the Labor Law, not from the Labor Law as a whole. The minimum age, the hours ceiling and the night ban are brought together in our guide to working age in Saudi Arabia and the limits on employing juveniles.

Fines for breaching the rules on employment of minors, and the 2025 amendments

• The fine. We give no amount for the fine for employing a young person or for any other breach of Part Ten of the Labor Law. The rows of the Schedule of Violations and Penalties (Ministerial Decision No. 112377) that cover Part Ten of the Labor Law are not single figures: each sets three amounts according to the size of the establishment, and quoting one of them alone misstates the fine for establishments of the other sizes.
• The 2025 amendments. Royal Decree M/44, which amended the Labor Law with effect from 19 February 2025, did not amend Articles 161 to 167 of the Labor Law. None of them carries an amendment note in the consolidated text published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, and none appears in the Ministry’s published table of the amendments, so Part Ten stands as it was enacted under Royal Decree M/51. Royal Decree M/44 did amend Article 2 of the Labor Law by adding new definitions, and the Ministry’s table prints the definition of a young person in the same words before and after the amendment. That decree did not amend Article 106 of the Labor Law.

Employment of minors in the attendance record

The six hour ceiling, the limit of four consecutive hours, and the ban on work on weekly rest days and Eid days are all tested against the attendance record, not against the contract. In practice, the record of a young person needs to be reviewed separately from the records of other employees, because hours that would count as overtime for another employee are, for a young person, a breach that no allowance can put right.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.