Join the debate

Search

Post your resume

Back

Print

Are expats worth it?

27 September 2007

Expat workers in Dubai are becoming prohibitively expensive, according to Mercer Human Resource Consulting. No wonder companies want to employ locals instead.

Mercer's report shows that average salaries for expatriates rose by over six percent last year. Daily allowances rose by over 20% and multinationals now pay an average rate of US$475 a day for executive expatriates on short-term assignments in Dubai (in banking, we suspect the total is a lot higher).

"Much of the increase is due to the enormous hike in accommodation costs – both in hotels and rented property," says Dr. Markus Wiesner, head of Mercer's UAE operations.

To cope with these increases, many multinationals are now giving their expatriate employees cash allowances in lieu of accommodation.

Moreover, in response to salary inflation, companies are now focusing more strongly on the 'total rewards' concept. Bonuses and performance-related pay now represent a higher proportion of the average reward package than was previously the case.

"There is definitely property inflation and some people are having to subsidise accommodation costs and utilities as prices rise," confirms Russell Adam, managing director, GCC at Akamai Financial Markets Executive Search (Dubai) Ltd.

Comments (9)

There is a new view to make a 6 year cap on residency for expats.

View all comments

Related content

Bookmark

  • Digg.com
  • Del.icio.us
  • Stumbleupon.com
  • Reddit.com
  • Yahoo.com

Comments (9)

  • this article is plain stupid. first of all it is the cost of living in dubai that is the real problem with greed arab landlords. Secondly locals cannot do the work of expats.
    Thirdly, their currency is pegged to the dollar which is falling in value every day.
    I wouldn't live in Dubai to pay for rent increases out of my pocket.

    expat 27 Sep 2007

    RECOMMEND Recommended 0 times | Alert Moderator

  • Yes demand and therefore compensations for locals are increasing but expat workers are always needed in the gulf for probably 100 reasons especially those coming from the west. So whatever the cost might be, it's always politically correct to bring in expats.

    Anonymous 01 Oct 2007

    RECOMMEND Recommended 0 times | Alert Moderator

  • there is a new view to make a 6 year cap on residency for expats. UK and other western countries should also cap the amount of assets that can be purchased by arabs and countries all over the world should seek to cap the residency of arab nationals too.

    expat 02 Oct 2007

    RECOMMEND Recommended 0 times | Alert Moderator

  • Giving preference to locals over expatriates means compromising the quality. Everyone knows despites so called financial centres of Middle East like Dubai, Bahrai, Qatar are unable to produce an average level of worker. I have not heard anyone to send their kids to these places for quality education.

    Omer Dar 03 Oct 2007

    RECOMMEND Recommended 0 times | Alert Moderator

  • For the firt comment, please note the concept of inflation that comes with economic growth. Otherwise, UK landlords would be the most gready in the world and not the Arabs.

    The comment by Omer, there are thousdans of gulf students graduating each year from the UK, USA and other places in the develope world and they go back to thier countires after graduation. Many top universities in the world opened campuses in the Gulf. What is needed now is to push the locals to word harder and fostering creativity.

    Joe 06 Oct 2007

    RECOMMEND Recommended 0 times | Alert Moderator

  • First of all, its the greedy landlords that are responsible for the mess and secondly the fall of the dollar to blame.
    And if you think that locals can work even one tenth of what the expats do, you must be living on planet Mars !!! When you need quality you PAY !!!

    Doctor Nothing 09 Oct 2007

    RECOMMEND Recommended 0 times | Alert Moderator

  • Expatriates bring a higher degree of skills, knowledge and experience to GCC an instant reliable pool of talent needed by the leaders, developers, financial institutions and medical fields operating in the Middle East.  GCC countries need confidence and assurance that things will happen to meet their idealict dreams.  In many instanced, expat has excel GCC levels of expectations.  The cost of living is rising in excess of 22% particularly in the housing markets.  Greed is the result of social conditioning and some may draw parallel between wealth, stability, social prowess, self satisfaction.  To have or not to have stems to inequalities.  I believe that that expat have and will continue to provide a central core of telants needed and their presence have benefited the wealth and social development of the citizens of many in the Mid East.  There are signs that these benefits are eroding by the new generation of GCC natives.  I agree that if there are restrictions on expats and foreign ownership of assets in GCC.  It is only fair that restrictions are imposed on GCC nationals to take up citizenship from countries outside of Mid East and the purchase of foreign assets prohibited.

    Equality analyst 15 Oct 2007

    RECOMMEND Recommended 0 times | Alert Moderator

  • with increasing inflation and rise in overall prices, i am certainly looking for options as i see no long term future in dubai. One way of controlling the situation is to start brining down rents as rapidly as increasing them. The situation at the present seems to only be worsening

    farid 21 Oct 2007

    RECOMMEND Recommended 0 times | Alert Moderator

  • A six year cap on residency for expats will mean that the locals will be thrown back to Stone Age..

    Alternative Energy! 21 Oct 2007

    RECOMMEND Recommended 1 time | Alert Moderator

Add your comment

* Mandatory

You have 1200 characters left

Enter the code shown here or sign in / register to skip this step. (What is this?)

Post comment

Jobs

Col3
Col4
Col5
Col6
bottom

Site Information

eFinancialCareers is a Dice Holdings, Inc. company. Dice Holdings, Inc. is a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (Ticker: DHX)