Saudi Occupational Classification

What the Saudi occupational classification is

The Saudi occupational classification (التصنيف المهني السعودي) is the reference that Saudi labour instruments use to identify an occupation in the labour market. In the texts of the decisions it carries the name the unified Saudi classification of occupations (التصنيف السعودي الموحد للمهن), and it is issued by the General Authority for Statistics (الهيئة العامة للإحصاء). The instruments we reviewed are in Arabic and give it no English title.

What those instruments do with it is specific. The localisation decisions key their tables of targeted professions to its profession codes, and the Implementing Regulation of the Labor Law ties an employer’s job descriptions to it. Two localisation decisions cite Council of Ministers Decision No. 660 dated 24/10/1441H, approving the unified Saudi classification of occupations. We have not obtained that decision.

The classification document itself is not among the sources we reviewed. We relied on the texts that refer to it, so we do not describe the structure of the Saudi occupational classification, its levels, groups or definitions, the code of any particular occupation in it, its update schedule, or where it is published for consultation. Anything those referring texts do not state is left unstated.

The employer’s duty that names the Saudi occupational classification

The Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) places the classification inside an existing duty. Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation sets out what every employer must do in implementing Article 42 of the Labor Law, which requires an employer to set a policy for training and qualifying its Saudi workers. The first item of Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation reads:

1.إعداد وصف مهني لمهام وواجبات الوظائف لديه والمتطلبات الوظيفية لشغلها وفق التصنيف السعودي الموحد للمهن، والمعايير المهنية الوطنية.

Rendered in English, the item requires the employer to prepare an occupational description of the tasks and duties of its jobs and of the requirements for filling them, in accordance with the unified Saudi classification of occupations and the national occupational standards. The rendering is ours; we found no published English text of the Implementing Regulation.

Two points follow from the full wording. First, a job description inside an establishment is not a free internal document in every respect: the text links the requirements for filling a job to a named outside reference. Second, the item names two references, not one. Citations of it can drop the national occupational standards, and the duty then reads narrower than it is.

In the sources we reviewed, we found no document setting out the national occupational standards (المعايير المهنية الوطنية), and nothing that explains how they relate to the classification: whether they sit above it, stand apart from it or form part of it. They are named as the text names them, and nothing more is said of them.

The position of the item also matters. It is the first of eight items in Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation, which implements Article 42 of the Labor Law in the chapter on training. The items after it deal with providing training and qualification programmes, evaluating the trainee and placing the evaluation in the worker’s file, the conditions on continued work after training, and other training matters. Taken alone, the first item looks like a standalone administrative duty. Taken in its place, it can be seen as the ground on which the training duties after it are built, since what a worker is to be trained in cannot be known before the requirements of the job are described. Our blended learning and sector skills council entries set out the rest of Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation.

Where the Saudi occupational classification is relied on

• On a change of profession. Condition (b) of clause 2 of item Third of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation requires the name of the profession to which a worker is changing to be specified according to the guide to Saudi occupational classification and description (دليل التصنيف والتوصيف المهني السعودي).
• In the localisation decisions. Their tables of targeted professions are keyed to the codes of the unified Saudi classification of occupations, as our guide to profession Saudization decrees under Nitaqat also records.
• In monitoring. The procedural guide to the localisation decision for administrative support professions states that the system applies the formula on the basis of the occupational titles in the social insurance database. The registered title is therefore the one the system takes up automatically.
• In the Nitaqat services. The Nitaqat guide lists, among the services of the Platinum, High Green and Medium Green bands, the ability to change the professions of expatriate workers to the professions available, subject to the unified Saudi classification of occupations and the Implementing Regulation.

Two names for the Saudi occupational classification in two texts

Two names appear in two different texts, and each has its place:

• The unified Saudi classification of occupations (التصنيف السعودي الموحد للمهن) is the name used in Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation, in the tables of the localisation decisions and in the profession change item among the Nitaqat services. It is the reference issued by the General Authority for Statistics.
• The guide to Saudi occupational classification and description (دليل التصنيف والتوصيف المهني السعودي) is the name used in the condition on naming the profession, in item Third of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation.

We have obtained neither document. In the sources we reviewed, we found no text establishing that the two are one document, or that one is an annex of the other. Taking them to be probably the same is not a finding on which to base anything, because doing so moves a condition from one text into a text that does not state it. Each provision is therefore given under the name it uses, and the relation between the two names stays open until both documents are obtained.

How the Saudi occupational classification differs from other uses of classification

The word classification is shared by three different operations, each applied to a different object:

• The Saudi occupational classification applies to the occupation in the labour market. In the texts we reviewed, it supplies the names and codes those texts refer to.
• Job classification applies to the job inside an organisation. It is an approach to job evaluation in which grades are defined in written descriptions and each job is then placed in the grade whose description fits it, which makes it a vertical ordering of relative value inside the organisation.
• Classification in Nitaqat applies to the establishment. It places the entity in a band according to its Saudization ratio, as our guide to what the Nitaqat band controls explains.

For that reason the bare word is best kept out of a sentence that spans two of these areas. An occupation in the market, a job in an organisation and an establishment in a programme are three different things, and one unqualified word cannot stand for all of them.

The Saudi occupational classification and an organisation’s job descriptions

Job analysis produces a description of what a job actually involves in an organisation, and a job family groups related jobs within that organisation. The Saudi occupational classification sits outside both, as a reference for the labour market as a whole. The distance between the title an organisation has chosen and the title recorded against the classification deserves attention, because the recorded title is the one that appears in the social insurance registration and in the tables of the decisions.

Why the registered title carries weight under the Saudi occupational classification

The daily effect of this reference is felt not in the internal job description file but in what the systems record about the establishment. Three facts explain this:

• Monitoring of the localisation decisions runs on the occupational titles in the social insurance database, in the words of the administrative support guide. The registered title is the input, not the title written in an internal contract or in an organisation chart.
• Since 15 April 2026, Saudization percentages in Nitaqat have been calculated from contracts documented electronically on Qiwa, under Council of Ministers Resolution No. 195 dated 4/4/1443H. An entity that does not document its contracts on Qiwa puts its Nitaqat classification at risk. The documentation duty is set out in our guide to employment contract attestation on Qiwa.
• Nitaqat measures at the level of the entity, meaning all branches in the same economic activity owned by a single establishment. Bands are updated weekly, and a worker’s weight is counted as soon as the worker is registered.

The result is that a gap between the title an establishment has chosen and the registered title is not a matter of internal formatting. It is the gap between what the establishment believes about itself and what the systems on which services depend record about it, and it is corrected where the registration is made, not in the HR file.

The route to correction is not the same for everyone. For a worker who is not Saudi, changing the registered profession is not an edit to a record. Under item Third of Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation, a change of profession is the licensing of such a worker to work in a profession other than the one they are licensed to practise, and it carries separate conditions, restrictions and a channel for applying. That description applies only to a worker who is not Saudi. In the sources we reviewed, we found no text stating how the registered title of a Saudi employee is corrected, so no procedure is described for it.

What the Saudi occupational classification is not used for

• Setting a wage. None of the texts we reviewed that refer to the classification uses it to set a wage or a pay range for an occupation. A wage rests on the contract, on the organisation’s policy and on whatever provisions govern it.
• Ranking occupations by value. The classification’s definitions were not among the sources we reviewed, so no meaning is drawn from the order of its codes. In the texts we reviewed, the codes serve as keys to tables. The vertical ordering of jobs inside an organisation is the work of job evaluation, of which job classification is one approach.
• Accrediting a person. The administrative support guide describes professional accreditation as something the system verifies through a technical link with the supervisory bodies, after it applies the formula to the registered titles. In those texts the classification identifies an occupation, and the check on the person who holds it is a separate step.
• Reserving an occupation for Saudis. The localisation decisions and the instructions issued in this area do that. The classification supplies those decisions with the codes by which they identify the professions they target.
• Replacing the internal description. The first item of Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation requires an occupational description of the tasks of the employer’s own jobs, prepared in accordance with the reference; it does not substitute the reference for the description. What a job involves in a particular organisation still calls for job analysis.

When the registered title and the actual work diverge under the Saudi occupational classification

The tables of the localisation decisions are keyed to the codes of the classification, and monitoring takes up the registered title. Two cases can arise from that:

• A title registered under the code of a targeted profession, with different actual work. The establishment then appears within the scope of the decision at that point because of what is registered, not because of how it describes itself.
• Actual work that falls within a targeted profession, with a registered title outside it. The automated reading of titles does not show it, and whether it shows or not says nothing about whether the registration is correct. The guides state that a decision applies to the occupational titles and to the worker’s actual work, and that the breach clause reaches assigning a task of a localised profession to a worker who is not Saudi, directly or indirectly, under any other job title. A title outside the table does not by that fact take the work outside the decision.

There is also a statutory limit, separate from monitoring, that concerns workers who are not Saudi. Article 38 of the Labor Law does not allow an employer to employ a worker in a profession other than the one recorded in the worker’s work permit. The question of a match is therefore not only one of automated records, and each of the two areas has its governing provision.

The provisions relied on are those of the Implementing Regulation of the Saudi Labor Law, issued by Ministerial Decision No. 115921 dated 19/8/1446H and published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development: Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation, item 1 (the occupational description) and its position among the eight items, and Article 14 of the Implementing Regulation, item Third (the definition of a change of profession and the condition on naming the profession). Also relied on are Article 42 of the Labor Law (the training policy that Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation implements) and Article 38 of the Labor Law (the profession in the work permit). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H amended Article 42 of the Labor Law, and the training policy duty it sets is the text as amended. The localisation facts come from the Ministry’s procedural guides to the localisation decisions, and the Nitaqat facts from the Nitaqat guide and the Ministry’s published answers on the programme.

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