Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat—The latest civil service employment figures released by Saudi Arabia has revealed a sharp rise in the number of female civil servants, including more women than men being employed in public sector jobs over the past two months.

The statistics published by the Saudi Ministry of Civil Service revealed a steep increase in the number of women being employed in teaching and non-teaching positions. Female applicants took 62 percent of civil service jobs advertised over the past two months, in comparison to 38 percent of male applicants.

According to the data published in the Civil Service Ministry’s report, 2,134 women were appointed to teaching posts over the past two months in comparison to 1,628 male teachers. While approximately 2,094 women were offered non-teaching posts compared to 996 men.

The report noted that women accounted for 38 percent of all public sector jobs, adding that more women than men were being appointed to both teaching and non-teaching jobs in Saudi Arabia’s central Riyadh province.

The statistics also revealed that more than 2,072 civil service ministry employees received training in 2013; 700 abroad and 1,300 inside Saudi Arabia.

As for the number of non-Saudi nationals employed by the state in the educational and health sectors, the report revealed that 73,900 foreign nationals were employed out of a total of 1.2 million official employees working in different state departments. The Civil Ministry report added that this figure had increased by 300 since the beginning of the year. Of this figure, approximately 53,700 foreign nationals were employed by the Saudi government in the health sector.

The higher-education sector has the second highest number of non-Saudi employees with a total of 14,600 foreign nationals employed to work here: 10,500 male employees and 4,100 female employees.

The public education sector has the third-highest number of non-Saudi employees which accounts for approximately 3,000 male teachers and 426 female teachers.