Taking stock of Saudi Arabia’s migrant crackdown

Saudi Arabia’s wide-scale crackdown on illegal migrant workers seems unlikely to have the desired effect of raising the employment of Saudi nationals in the private sector. In the short term, it runs the risk of leading to labour shortages, higher inflation and disruptions to economic activity. And over a longer horizon, getting more Saudis into private sector work will require reforms to the education system and, perhaps, incentives to increase wages in jobs previously filled by migrants.