According to Central Bureau of Statistics data, the rate of employment among haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) men in Israel fell to 54.3% in the first quarter of 2024 from 56.7% in the fourth quarter of 2023. The rate of employment of haredi men has been stable at around 50% in the past decade, but it started to rise at the beginning of 2022,and reached a peak in the last quarter, but, as mentioned, it has now fallen.
"Just as there was nothing to get excited about in the previous quarter, there’s nothing to get excited about now," a Ministry of Finance source said. "Employment of haredi men is slightly above 50%, and that’s really low."
Dr. Eitan Regev, director of research and deputy CEO at the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs is a little more optimistic. "First of all," he says, "the decline is not statistically significant, so it’s too soon to draw conclusions. That doesn’t mean that there was no decline in this quarter, which could be connected to the war. In times of crisis the weakest workers are generally the worst hit. It was like that in the Covid pandemic period as well. It’s not surprising that a similar decline was also observed among Arab men and haredi women, as also happened in the pandemic period. I estimate that this is probably a small, temporary decline, to do with the war."
Indeed, the rate of employment among haredi women also fell in the first quarter, by 1.5% to 80.1%, and among Arab men, by 0.7% to 75%. By contrast, employment among Arab women rose by a substantial 2.1%, but the absolute level is low, at 46.1%. The employment rate of non-haredi Jews remained fairly stable, rising by 0.5% to 86.8% for men, and falling by 0.2% to 82.2% for women.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 21, 2024.
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