Job opportunities appear to be in decline as employers across the region have been posting fewer positions online over the past year.
The Monster Employment Index Middle East has recorded a 15 per cent fall in online job postings in the Middle East and North Africa, with the sharpest decline in the UAE at 31 per cent.
The Index gauges online job postings every month based on a review of aggregated career websites and job postings by employers in the region.
"Owing to the global business scenarios, the employers in the Middle East continue to adopt a cautious approach in hiring," said Sanjay Modi, the managing director at Monster.com India, Middle East and South East Asia. "This is reflective in the double-digit drop in the Monster Employment Index."
While some sectors such as health care, education, hospitality and communications showed positive growth, others including engineering, retail and manufacturing fell dramatically, particularly manufacturing which suffered a 34 per cent decrease.
Chemicals, consumer goods and IT and telecoms did not fair much better on the whole.
Despite its current political turmoil, Egypt's online job postings increased the most with a 17 per cent rise since June last year. Qatar's continued economic prosperity resulted in an 11 per cent rise in job postings, followed by Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia's 3 per cent increase in online recruitment activity was largely down to the oil and gas sector, which benefited from a 34 per cent rise, followed by education with 13 per cent.
Oman and Kuwait both declined, while the UAE's 31 per cent was the biggest fall in the region.
The UAE's customer service sector registered a 46 per cent decline in employment opportunities, while production and manufacturing were also subject to slowdowns.
But the figures are not all gloomy for the UAE, with the healthcare sector growing by 8 per cent.
While some countries around the world are enjoying improvements in their economies, most are still struggling to recapture the levels of activity reached before the global financial crisis.
The global unemployment rate last year was 6 per cent, according to the International Labour Organization, which predicts 202 million people could be unemployed across the world by the end of this year. Young people tend to be the worst affected, with some 13 per cent below the age of 24 jobless.
