Sector Skills Council

What a sector skills council is

A sector skills council (المجالس القطاعية للمهارات, Sector Skills Councils in the plural) is one of a set of councils that the first Article of the councils’ governance guide defines as councils formed under the supervision and operation of the Ministry, with a membership made up of employers and related parties.

The Ministry in that definition is the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development. That is the first point to settle about the councils: they are not a programme of the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF, known as Hadaf), and filing them among the Fund’s programmes is an error.

The instruments behind the sector skills councils

The governance guide states the basis on which it rests, and that basis runs through three instruments:

1. The Labour Market Strategy (استراتيجية سوق العمل), approved by Council of Ministers Resolution No. 254 dated 23/4/1442H, corresponding to 6 December 2020. It includes an initiative for occupational planning, for building occupational standards and for a skills system, and it places ownership of the skills and occupations planning initiative with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development.
2. Ministerial Decision No. 87438 dated 12/6/1445H, corresponding to 25 December 2023, which formed the steering committee of the sector skills councils project.
3. The governance guide for the sector skills councils (دليل حوكمة المجالس القطاعية للمهارات), issued to regulate how the project works and published by the Ministry on 27/11/1445H, corresponding to 4 June 2024.

The councils therefore rest on a published instrument with a number and a date. A statement that no such body exists in the Kingdom is contradicted by an existing instrument, and in this area a claim of absence needs more proof than a claim of existence, not less.

Two committees that govern the sector skills councils project

The steering committee is chaired by the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, with the Deputy Minister for the Labour Sector as deputy chair. Fifteen further members are drawn from the Ministry’s undersecretaries and assistant undersecretaries, and the Secretary General of the Sector Skills Councils sits on the committee as member and secretary. The guide sets these rules for its work:

• It meets at least four times a year at the invitation of its chair, or whenever the need arises.
• A meeting is valid when a majority of members attend, provided the chair or the deputy chair is among them.
• Decisions are taken by a majority of those present, and on a tie the side with the chair prevails.
• Its powers include establishing and dissolving sector skills councils on the recommendation of the executive committee. Under the guide, then, the number of councils is not fixed.

The executive committee is chaired by the Deputy Minister for the Labour Sector, with the Undersecretary for Skills and Training as deputy chair, and its membership follows the same pattern.

The sources we reviewed do not settle how a particular establishment joins a council, or what the conditions and procedures of membership are. The governance guide regulates the governance of the project, and we found no joining procedure in it addressed to establishments.

How many sector skills councils there are, and who sits on them

The councils’ booklet, published by the Ministry in July 2025, gives 13 councils in priority sectors. It states that the targeted sectors make up about 75% of gross domestic product, and that the councils bring together more than 200 members and ten lead ministries.

The booklet also gives the membership in figures: employers about 70% and government bodies 3% to 4%. Workers take part through workers’ committees, alongside other members drawn from experts. The employers are large companies and small and medium enterprises, together with the Federation of Saudi Chambers.

Three qualifications go with these figures:

• The count is attributed to its document. The Ministry’s initiative page in 2023 lists 12 sectors, while the booklet in 2025 gives 13 councils. The figure is therefore stated as 13 councils according to the 2025 booklet, never as 13 since the launch, because the Ministry has not published the difference as a change.
• Activity figures are not audited results. The meetings, inputs, skills and paths the booklet reports are activity the Ministry reports about the councils, and they carry no date later than the booklet’s publication. The booklet counts more than 150 meetings, more than 200 members who shared their views, more than 5,000 inputs on the frameworks, more than 8,500 skills, 46 value chains and more than 200 career paths.
• Shares are published for two groups, not four. The booklet gives a percentage for employers and one for government bodies, and names workers and experts without a percentage. We do not estimate a share for either of them: the two remaining shares are not derived by subtraction, and the membership is not described as divided into four known portions.

The sectors the sector skills councils cover

The booklet names these sectors: wholesale and retail trade; culture and entertainment; construction and real estate activities; health; professional and consulting services; logistics and transport; security services; the digital sector; financial services and insurance; tourism and hospitality; energy and utilities; manufacturing; and cybersecurity.

The last of them is where the two documents differ. The 2023 initiative page lists twelve sectors and does not include cybersecurity, whereas the 2025 booklet gives thirteen councils and names it. The straightforward reading is that a council was added between the two dates, but no announcement of that addition has been published, so it remains a reading.

The booklet carries a second difference, narrower than the first and more important in use. In one place it gives 13 councils, and on its skills frameworks page it refers to twelve sectors. It follows that the framework counts and their inputs are calculated on a base of twelve sectors, so they are not attached to the figure 13 or divided by it.

Both differences lie in the Ministry’s documents, not in our reading of them. A reader who meets them in another source is not facing a contradiction that calls for a choice between them, but two documents stating two figures, and the way to handle them is to attribute each figure to the place where it appears.

What the sector skills councils produce

• A unified information base for the sector on its current and future skill needs.
• Sector skills frameworks (أطر المهارات القطاعية), prepared and updated continuously.
• Cooperation on skills interventions: education policy, quality assurance and financing.
• Skills information reports.

In the booklet, a skills framework is built from six modules: the definition of the sector and its subsectors; prevailing trends and their effect; job domains and job families; career paths; the skills of each subsector and job domain; and a skills dictionary (قاموس المهارات).

How a sector skills council differs from occupational standards

Occupational standards are reference descriptions written at the level of an occupation in the labour market, not at the level of a job in one establishment, and their definition does not determine which body issues them in the Kingdom.

The councils do not fill that gap on the published evidence. What has been published comes down to two points. First, the Labour Market Strategy approved by Council of Ministers Resolution No. 254 included building occupational standards, within an initiative owned by the Ministry. Second, the published output of the councils is skills frameworks, the skills dictionary and skills information reports. In the sources we reviewed, we found no text establishing that the councils are the body that issues occupational standards, and that conclusion cannot be drawn from the fact that the initiative and the councils’ output share a subject.

The two also differ in direction. A sector framework describes the skills and career paths of a whole sector, which is wider than a description of a single occupation. An external reference for one particular occupation therefore lies outside the sector framework.

Where the sector skills councils appear in the Labor Law layer: one provision

Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) 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. Paragraph (1) of Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation requires a description of the tasks, duties and requirements of the employer’s jobs, prepared in accordance with the unified Saudi classification of occupations and the national occupational standards.

Paragraph (2) of Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation is the one that names the councils. Its text reads:

2. توفير برامج التدريب والتأهيل للوظائف التي تتطلب مهامها ذلك بما في ذلك البرامج التدريبية وفقاً لما ورد في الفقرة (1) من هذه المادة بالإضافة للبرامج التدريبية المقررة في المجالس القطاعية للمهارات.

Rendered in English, the paragraph requires the employer to provide training and qualification programmes for the jobs whose tasks call for them, including training programmes in line with paragraph (1), in addition to the training programmes prescribed in the sector skills councils. The rendering is ours; we found no published English text of the Implementing Regulation.

This is the only place in the statutory training layer where the councils are named, and its scope holds in both directions:

• What the provision says. It places the training programmes prescribed in the sector skills councils among the training and qualification programmes an employer provides for jobs whose tasks call for them.
• What the provision does not say. It does not make membership of a council compulsory for an establishment, it attaches no percentage to the councils, and it does not make a council a regulator of the employer. Under their governance guide, the councils are formed under the supervision and operation of the Ministry, and the councils’ booklet describes them as building sector skills frameworks and issuing skills information reports.

Paragraph (2) of Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation attaches nothing further to the councils’ programmes. In the sources we reviewed, we found no effect of those programmes on any other obligation of an establishment, or on any classification that applies to it.

No figure or percentage is carried into this provision from elsewhere. The training ratio in Article 43 of the Labor Law, as amended, is now the ratio set by a decision of the Minister. We have not obtained that decision, so no figure stands in for it.

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, paragraphs (1) and (2) (the employer’s training duties, including the council programmes). Also relied on are Article 42 of the Labor Law (the training policy that Article 15 of the Implementing Regulation implements) and Article 43 of the Labor Law (the training ratio). Royal Decree M/44 of 1446H amended Article 43 of the Labor Law, leaving the ratio to a decision of the Minister. That decree’s amendment of Article 42 of the Labor Law did not alter the duty it states.

Where a sector skills council fits in an organisation’s work

The councils work at the level of the sector, and an organisation works at the level of its roles. Measuring a skills gap begins by setting out the skills each role requires at a defined level of proficiency. Skipping that step leaves a result that is an impression expressed as a number.

What a sector output can offer is raw material for that first step: a published description of the sector’s skills and career paths to measure against, in place of an unwritten standard. It does not replace measurement inside the organisation, because the gap is measured on the organisation’s own people. See also competencies, performance standards and job classification.

Before a decision rests on the sector skills councils

The facts above are taken from the councils’ governance guide and booklet, both published by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, and from the text of the Implementing Regulation. Counts and figures are attributed to the date of the document they come from, as given where each appears.

What matters to an establishment in practice comes down to a single point. Its duty in this area is to provide training and qualification programmes for the jobs whose tasks call for them, with the councils’ programmes named among them; the duty is not to become a party to a council. Taking the provision to impose an institutional tie reads into it something it does not contain.

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