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With the official unemployment rate at 0.5% (2011) in the State of Qatar, youth unemployment theoretically should not present any concerns for future development and intergenerational equity. However, government statistics may be masking several future challenges with respect to sustainable development: voluntarily unemployed youth, skills-labor force mismatch, reliance on the public sector for employment, and the shortage of science and technology graduates. Also, Qatar relies primarily on an expatriate workforce to meet its labor needs, and new planned infrastructural development projects will require the importation of more low-skilled manual labor. The deserts of Qatar and its surrounding Arabian Gulf waters represent some of the most fragile and stressed ecosystems in the world, and further rapid growth necessitating the increase of the labor force by possibly an additional 1/3 of the current population will place added anthropogenic stress on the environment.
Keywords: youth unemployment, Qatar, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), sustainability
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