RIYADH: The unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia fell to 12.5 percent in the first quarter of 2019, according to official data released on Sunday by the General Authority for Statistics (GaStat). The labor market bulletin results showed a slight improvement in the jobless rate, which stood at 12.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018. Unemployment among Saudi men stood at 6.6 percent, compared with 31.7 percent among Saudi women during the first quarter of 2019. The unemployment rate for the total Saudi and non-Saudi population in the Kingdom stood at 5.7 percent, compared with 6 percent during the fourth quarter of 2018. The survey’s results also showed an increase in the economic participation rate of all Saudis (15 years of age and above), which stood at 42.3 percent during the first quarter of 2019, compared with 42 percent during the previous quarter. The bulletin’s results showed that the total number of Saudi employees in the Kingdom has slightly risen compared with the fourth quarter of 2018, reaching 3,112,029 in the first quarter of 2019. The bulletin also indicated that the number of Saudis seeking work reached 945,323 during the first quarter of 2019, according to data from the Ministry of Municipal Service (Saed and Jaddarah programs) and HRDF’s Taqat program.