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Most MENA employees expecting increased cost of living – survey

Most employees in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) are expecting an increase in the cost of living, a recent survey has shown.

Results of the survey, done by jobs portal  Bayt.com, was based on a sample of close to 4,000 respondents done across the region from the UAE to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.

Over half or 54% of the respondents said they are expecting a salary raise this year;  over half as well or 53% said they are planning to find a better job in the same industry within the next year. Data for the 2017 Bayt.com Middle East and North Africa Salary Survey was collected online around the second quarter of the year.

The results showed that 80% of the respondents expect the cost of living to increase further this year with the highest being those in Tunisia at 93%; the lowest, in Morocco at 64%. Some 80 percent of UAE respondents shared such expectation, according to the survey.

“Food & beverage and utilities are the top two elements for which respondents noticed an increase in costs in 2016 at 76% and 74%, respectively,” stated the Bayt.com report.

“In the UAE and Kuwait, 74%, and 78% respectively of the respondents claim to have seen an increase in rents, a proportion which is higher than in other countries covered in the survey,” it added.

A profile of the respondents prepared in the report showed that 33% of them were employed in senior or middle management positions, while 17% were junior managers, team leaders and supervisors at the time of the survey.

Some 56% of respondents have been working in their current industry for up to six years, while eight in 10 respondents (78%) have been working with their current employer for up to six years.

Half of respondents have up to ten people reporting to them both directly and indirectly and more than a third of respondents (34%) claim to be midway in terms of seniority when asked about the level they have reached in their career path.

Lastly, some 61% of the respondents have held up to two jobs over the past five years while 35% have held three jobs or more.

Bayt.com regularly comes up with surveys to gauge the region’s human resource market.

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