Bahrain - Total Employment

According to the international definition of employment, the “employed” comprise all persons above the age specified for measuring the economically active population, who during the reference period were in the following categories:

Paid employment

• At work: persons who, during the reference period, performed some work for wage or salary, in cash or in kind;
• With a job but not at work: persons who, having already worked in their present job, were temporarily not at work during the reference period but had a formal attachment to their job. Formal job attachment is to be measured according to one or more of the following criteria: the continued receipt of wage or salary during absence; an assurance of return to work following the end of the contingency, or an agreement as to the date of return; and the elapsed duration of absence from the job which, wherever relevant, may be that duration for which workers can receive compensation benefits without obligation to accept other jobs

Self-employment

• At work: persons who, during the reference period, performed some work for profit or family gain, in cash or in kind;
• With an enterprise but not at work: persons with an enterprise, which may be a business enterprise, a farm or a service undertaking, who were temporarily not at work during the reference period for some specific reason.

Students, homemakers and others who combine their activities during the reference period with paid employment and self-employment as defined here should be considered as employed on the same basis as other categories of employed persons.  

Also, members of the armed forces, regular as well as temporary members, should be included among persons in paid employment.

The international standards further specify that for operational purposes, the notion of “some work” may be interpreted as work for at least one hour during the reference period. The one-hour criterion in the definition of employment is to cover all types of employment that may exist in the country, including short-time work, casual labour, stand-by work and other types of irregular employment. The criterion is crucial in defining unemployment as a situation of total lack of work. It is also a necessary criterion in the measurement of labour productivity if total employment in the denominator is to correspond to aggregate production in the nominator.

The international definition of employment defines “work” in a broad sense covering all economic activities as specified by the production boundary of the System of National Accounts. According to the most recent version of this system, the production boundary covers all production of goods whether intended for sale on the market or not, as well as production of services for the market but with the exclusion of services not intended for sale on the market such as cooking food for own consumption, sewing or mending clothes for own use, or teaching or nursing own children. There are two exceptions concerning collecting fire-woods and carrying water over long distances

In Bahrain, current data on employment are generally obtained from the administrative records of the General Organisation for Social Insurance (GOSI), the Pension Fund Commission (PFC), and the Civil Service Bureau (CSB). The data cover employees and employers registered at these organisations. The system, however, does not cover all workers in the Kingdom. For example, domestic workers engaged by households are not covered by the mandatory insurance scheme of GOSI, nor are all employers, own-account workers and unpaid family workers. There are also duplications with records of persons registered in more than one organization.