Dubai's Government Media Office published a transaction count from Trakhees, the authority that oversees the Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation's development areas: International City, Palm Jumeirah, The World Islands, Jumeirah Village Circle, Dubai Maritime City, Al Jaddaf and Jebel Ali Village. The release, dated 3 September, covers 22,823 transactions processed by the Licensing and Services Department between January and June 2026.
How the total breaks down
The department reports four categories. Employment visas account for 11,603 transactions, 51 per cent of the total. Labour disputes, no objection certificates, occupational health cards and services for individuals without a sponsor together make up 7,923 transactions, about 35 per cent. Establishment cards come to 1,271, and everything else totals 2,026.
What you can and can't do with it
Worth flagging for anyone treating this as a dataset rather than a headline: the 22,823 figure is aggregated across all seven zones, not broken out by district, and it is a single half-year snapshot, not a time series, so there is nothing here yet to trend against. What it does offer is a category-level split of administrative activity in zones that rarely publish anything at all. Employment visa volume is the closest proxy Trakhees gives for hiring activity inside its jurisdiction, and cross-referencing it against rental data by area, through a source like Doment's area guides, is one way to test whether visa counts lead or lag rent movements in International City and JVC specifically.
Originally published on Doment, Dubai property intelligence.
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