Kuwait studies cap on workers of one nationality per firm

Quick heads-up: Kuwait is looking at a rule that would limit how many workers of one nationality a private company can hire. Nothing is final yet, but it’s a big enough idea that you should know about it now, not later.

This comes on top of other moves we’ve been watching, like the government closing files of companies that don’t pay salaries on time. It all fits into a bigger push to change how the private sector workforce looks.

So what exactly is being proposed?

The idea is simple to explain, even if it’s not simple to apply. Right now, a private company can have staff made up mostly, or even almost entirely, of workers from one country. Under the proposal being studied, that would no longer be allowed past a certain point.

Officials are looking at setting that point somewhere between 30% and 40% of a company’s total workforce. So if a firm has 100 employees, no more than 30 to 40 of them could be from the same nationality, depending on where the final number lands.

This sits inside a wider, ongoing effort to fix demographic imbalances in Kuwait and to speed up what’s usually called