“Yediot Ahronot” reports that the number of new hires plunged in the first quarter of 2001. A monthly average of 35,000 people were placed in jobs during the first quarter, compared with 53,000 in the last quarter of 2000. This emerges from a special survey conducted by the Manpower Planning Authority on the effects of the Intifada on the business sector. 84,000 people are estimated to have lost their jobs from the start of the Indifada (late September 2000) until March of this year.
The decline in hiring is the result of businesses closing down, plants shutting down, and a general fall in demand for work, attributed to the economic slowdown. The authority says that the high-tech, business, and financial sectors greatly contributed to the fall in hirings, and accounted for 45% of the decline, together with hotel and hosting sectors. The total number of lay-offs, regardless of the reason, is higher than the number of hirings, by a monthly average of 11,000.
The number of dismissed workers reached a peak in the fourth quarter of 2000, averaging 64,000 a month. According to estimates at the time, 14,000 of these workers were dismissed as a direct result of the Intifada. In the first quarter of 2001, the number of dismissed workers fell to a monthly average of 47,000, the same level as before the Intifada erupted. In the hotel and hosting sector, 14,000 workers were laid off in the last quarter of 2000, but in the first quarter of 2001, only 4,100 employees were dismissed. In the high-tech sector, the number of dismissed workers fell from 1,700 workers in the last quarter of 2000 to 1,000 employees in the first quarter of 2001.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 12 June, 2001