The oil price increases of 1973 and 1974 stimulated tremendous labor demand in the Arab petroleum-exporting nations, which tended to have small populations. Jordan, suffering from unemployment and having an educated and skilled work force, was prepared to fill this vacuum over the following decade, several hundred thousand Jordanians left their country to work in neighboring Arab nations (see Migration , ch. 2). About 60 percent of Jordanian emigrants worked in Saudi Arabia, about 30 percent worked in Kuwait, and most of the remainder found employment in other Persian Gulf states.

Data as of December 1989