Historical dataset showing Saudi Arabia literacy rate by year from 1992 to 2020.

Saudi Arabia: Female literacy rate, ages 15-24: The latest value from 2020 is 99 percent, unchanged from 99 percent in 2017. In comparison, the world average is 92.09 percent, based on data from 37 countries. Historically, the average for Saudi Arabia from 1992 to 2020 is 94.5 percent. The minimum value, 81 percent, was reached in 1992 while the maximum of 99 percent was recorded in 2013.

According to a survey on education and training in Saudi Arabia in 2017, the illiteracy rate of female youths as a percentage of total population was *** percent and *** percent for male respondents. The youth population between the age of ** to ** was the highest in Saudi Arabia in 2020 among all age groups.

The average monthly wage for female specialists in professional, technical, and humanitarian fields in Saudi Arabia in 2019 was about ** thousand Saudi riyals compared to **** thousand Saudi riyals for males employed in this field.

Saudi labour market trends 

The Saudi female labor participation rate reached a record at more than ** percent of the female population in the first half of 2020. In 2018, the majority of nurses in the country were female. The majority of the workforce is in the oil and gas industry as the economy is centered on oil and gas production. Following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many expatriate workers left the country after the tax raise.

Saudi Arabia education system development

Historically, Islamic facilities such as mosques and Kuttab supplied education to Saudi elites and wealthy families. Private institutions developed the educational system, and subsequently, high schools were established to educate pupils for university studies overseas. Literacy rates for males were as low as ** percent, and considerably lower for females because they only had access to religious instruction. Saudi Arabia's education system remains gender-segregated, with women still attending colleges and educational institutions that are just for women. On average, both genders' graduation rates are very close; the percentage of female graduates was around ** percent in 2019. Following the establishment of seven new institutions, notably Kind Saud University, in the mid-1990s, the country's tertiary education systems were diversified. By 2022, tertiary education enrolment was predicted to hit *** million. The most often mentioned educational problems by both genders were the difficulty of studying, followed by the difficulty of getting to their schools and institutions.