To what extent can states in the Gulf utilize propaganda to boost citizens’ evaluations of government policies? In the past few years, the Gulf monarchies have redoubled their efforts to censor critics and flood public discourse with pro-government messaging. However, due to constraints on conducting research inside many of these countries, it has been difficult to assess the effectiveness of these efforts. Despite repression of public criticism, we hypothesize that citizens can still accurately assess government policy performance by gathering information through personal observation and social networks. In this article, we assess whether highlighting the successes of a well-known labor-market policy in Saudi Arabia – either in securing jobs for Saudis or holding employers to account – meaningfully alters citizens’ views. Utilizing an original survey experiment covering three regions of Saudi Arabia, we find that neither framing has a substantial effect on citizens’ assessments of Nitaqat. However, lower incomes, lack of a college degree, and being from outside the capital city of Riyadh (i.e. locations where jobs growth for Saudis has been slower) were all associated with more skeptical assessments of Nitaqat. This in turn suggests clear limits on the ability of the state to compensate for policy failures through propaganda.