52% of companies in Israel in the high-tech services sector cut their number of employees in the first half of 2023, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports. This is a sharp rise from the 22% of companies that reported reducing their number of employees in the second half of 2022.
Non-tech services companies also reduced their workforces in the first half of 2023 with 21% of companies reporting a cut in the number of employees, compared with 11% in the second half of 2022. In other words there has been a weakening in the job market, especially in the tech sector.
33% of managers of companies in the high-tech services industry reported that there was no economic damage to their companies in the first half of 2023 compared with 54% in the non-tech services industry that said there was no damage to their companies.
36% of high-tech services companies reported a fall in demand for the products that they provide. This is perhaps due to the general decrease in demand worldwide due to inflation and the economic slowdown. Interest rate increases also make it difficult to raise new capital, which probably causes 20% of high-tech companies to report financial damage due to difficulties in raising capital.
Evidence of cuts in the field can be seen in the Central Bureau of Statistics announcement that was published in June. Thus, the number of job vacancies for programmers continues to decline, and was 5,872 on average from March to May 2023, compared with 6,035 on average from February to April. At the peak of demand for programmers, between December 2021 and February 2022, there were no Less than 14,239 programmer job vacancies.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on July 10, 2023.
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