Salary Expectations vs. Employer Offers: The UAE Job Market Disparity

A new report by means of Naukrigulf has discovered a substantial mismatch between jobseekers’ revenue expectancies and employers’ gives inside the UAE. With the rising fee of living setting stress on professionals to seek better pay, organizations are leveraging an expanding talent pool to preserve earnings increase in take a look at. This disparity, which ranges between 15% and 30%, is most pronounced in senior roles, making it tougher for experienced professionals to secure big income increases.

The Rising Cost of Living and Salary Expectations

The UAE has witnessed a significant growth in populace during the last four years, growing from 9.789 million in 2021 to 11.346 million in 2025, according Worldometers. This populace surge has brought about higher rents, elevated faculty expenses, and a upward push in transportation and healthcare prices, making it greater high-priced for citizens to hold their fashionable of residing. As a end result, jobseekers are disturbing higher salaries to deal with these financial pressures.

Despite those growing charges, employers are hesitant to offer big pay raises because of the provision of a broader talent pool. With an inflow of world specialists seeking possibilities in the Gulf location, companies have more hiring options, reducing the necessity to growth salaries notably.

Mismatch in Salary Expectations

The Naukrigulf Hiring Outlook Report highlights that jobseekers within the UAE generally request salaries 15% to 30% higher than what employers are inclined to offer. This discrepancy is mainly noticeable in senior management roles, where the salary hole is even wider. The growing variety of task applicants permits corporations to be selective in their hiring, similarly limiting the chances of candidates securing good sized pay increases.

High-Demand Skill-Based Roles and Salary Premiums

While general salary boom remains moderate, sure ability-primarily based roles retain to command higher pay due to skills shortages. Professionals in fields along with IT, cybersecurity, and synthetic intelligence (AI) can earn salaries 25% to 50% above the market common.

Sales and advertising professionals in high-boom industries, including software-as-a-carrier (SaaS) and fintech, are also capable of negotiate salaries which might be 20% to 30% better than wellknown market fees. The increasing call for for specialized skill units has created hiring delays for employers, with a few roles closing vacant for months because of a loss of qualified applicants.

UAE’s Hiring Outlook: Growth Amid Challenges

Despite the earnings disparity, the task marketplace in the UAE remains robust. According to the Naukrigulf file, 87% of employers plan to enlarge their team of workers over the subsequent six months, with most effective 7% thinking about process cuts.

Mid-stage specialists are especially in call for, accounting for 71% of all hiring pastime. Senior control roles also see strong demand, despite the fact that filling those positions proves greater difficult because of the widening earnings gap.

Sectors Facing Talent Shortages

Several industries inside the UAE are struggling to discover professional people, similarly influencing hiring traits. The engineering sector, along with civil, mechanical, and electric engineering, is experiencing a shortage of skilled experts, specifically within the production, infrastructure, and power industries.

Technology-pushed roles also are going through expertise deficits, with demand surging for cybersecurity specialists, AI professionals, cloud computing professionals, and complete-stack developers. As the Gulf place maintains to strengthen its position as a global trade hub, operations and supply chain management specialists are an increasing number of famous, mainly the ones professional in logistics, procurement, and supply chain making plans.

Conclusion

The UAE job market affords both opportunities and demanding situations for jobseekers and employers. While rising living charges pressure professionals to demand higher salaries, an increasing international expertise pool keeps wage boom in check. Companies hold to are trying to find professional experts, specifically in IT, engineering, and sales, however hiring delays persist because of expertise shortages. As the employment landscape evolves, jobseekers might also want to adjust their expectations or upskill to remain aggressive, at the same time as employers must locate approaches to attract and hold pinnacle talent in a relatively dynamic marketplace.