Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Growing wealth and rising income apart, policy-makers in the Gulf countries have not effectively addressed the key issue of rising unemployment.
Shortcomings in the education system and the prevalence of foreign labourers who are prepared to work longer hours for less pay are the crucial factors fuelling unemployment among the locals.
Bahrain, which has limited oil resources and which depends heavily on banking and tourism, suffers from unemployment estimated at 15 per cent, although official sources put the figure at nine per cent.
One of the reasons for a substantial number of the local population remaining without jobs is that they refuse employment that involves physical work such as agriculture, construction and municipal services.
Locals seek office jobs because the social environment looks down upon someone employed in manual work.
Education, which is the sure-shot way to a white collar job, lags behind in many Gulf countries.
A World Bank report has ranked Jordan and Kuwait as top educational reformers in the Arab world.
The report says Jordan and Kuwait were "top performers" in terms of access, efficiency and quality of education.
Egypt, Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories were ranked average in the study, while Djibouti, Yemen, Iraq and Morocco were the lowest.
The report, titled "The Road not travelled: education reform in the Middle East and North Africa," says the relationship between education and economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa remained "weak," and "the divide between education and unemployment has not been bridged."
Widespread unemployment would pose risks to the stability of the region. According to McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), to keep up with growing populations, the Gulf states will need to create more than four million new jobs for its citizens over the next decade - a tall order for a region in which just 4.8 million citizens are employed today.
And though the government has been the primary employer of Gulf nationals, the private sector will need to become the chief job creator.
New research by McKinsey has brought out for the first time the potential scale of the oil windfall even as it suggests what is to be done to tackle unemployment.
The oil revenues of the six Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states will collect up to $6.2 trillion in profits over the next 14 years if crude prices are $70 per barrel. That's more than triple the amount they earned over the last 14 years.
This staggering figure is more than twice the size of the British economy today or four times the total profits of the Global Fortune 500 companies combined.
The new generation of Gulf leaders already has announced plans to pump more capital into their own economies. Since 1993, GCC domestic investment rates have averaged 20 per cent of gross domestic product - almost one-quarter lower than the 24 per cent average investment rate of China, India, Brazil and Russia (BRIC)_combined. (That compares with an internal reinvestment rate of 19 per cent in the US over the same period.)
The GCC states now have begun to invest more in new industries, infrastructure, health care, education, and other areas to catch up to their so-called BRIC peers.
But after 40 years of education, investments that had closed the gender gap at the primary school level and resulted in nearly universal education, the region now faces new challenges posed by globalisation and the increasing importance of knowledge in the development process.
Countries in the region are not enjoying the same returns on education investment at the higher education level as some fast-growing middle-income countries in Asia, such as Malaysia and the Republic of Korea, says Michal Rutkowski, sector director for Human Development in the World Bank's Mena region.
"What we see in the region is that those who graduate from universities cannot find jobs. The unemployment rate is very high among them. Therefore, the average return that you observe is also not high, and this is a serious problem, Mr Rutkowski says.
Today's world of intense global competition and rapid technological change demands problem-solving, communication and language skills not being emphasised in most schools of the region.
Up till now, Mena countries were focusing on building schools, recruiting and training teachers, and enrolling ever greater numbers of boys and girls in primary school.
But the region still lags behind East Asia and Latin America in literacy and in average years of schooling among people 15 and older. While most boys and girls enrol in primary school, many drop out in the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades, particularly girls, to work or because of societal pressures.
Since education is the main source of knowledge creation, the task is clear. The education systems must be changed to deliver new skills and expertise necessary to excel in a more competitive environment.
