This is Saudi Arabia's 'Achilles' heel'
In the aftermath of the 2003 terrorist attacks carried out by nationals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, then-Crown Prince Abdullah argued that youth unemployment was the Kingdom's biggest challenge.
Fast forward thirteen years into the future, and the problem remains a pressing issue for the Arab state to this day.
"Abdullah singled out youth unemployment as Saudi Arabia's number one security challenge - and it is," Helima Croft, the head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told Business Insider in an interview on Tuesday.
"That's the 'Achilles' heel' of Saudi Arabia - the question of how to deal with its young population."
Approximately two-thirds of the Saudi population is under the age of 30, but about 30% of the population aged 15-24 is unemployed, according to a 2014 estimate from the International Labor Organization. Plus, about 27% of the population is under the age of 14, which implies that Saudi Arabia's going to need to create a lot more jobs in the near future.
"It's the problem of young, unemployed men who are idle. They can't marry; they have no jobs," Croft told Business Insider. "In the Middle East, it takes the form of young, idle men getting swept up in extremist groups."
"It's a small fraction of that unemployed population that joined groups like ISIS, [but] you only have to have a small fraction join these groups for tremendous damage to be caused," she continued.
"I look at Saudi Arabia and think, well, we do have those periodic ISIS attacks in the country ... these low level attacks in the eastern provinces where the Shiites live or on the Yemen border security outposts," Croft continued.
"But what if there is something more serious in Saudi Arabia? That's what worries me the most about Saudi. A real security incident there."
But the youth unemployment issue is not limited to Saudi Arabia. It's actually a big obstacle for various countries in the Middle East and North Africa.