After staging a recovery during the emergence from the Covid crisis, unemployment in Israel is back on the rise. In the second half of October, unemployment rose to 5.6% from 5.1% in the first half of the month, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports. Over the same period, broad unemployment (including people who stopped working at the start of the Covid crisis) rose from 7.1% to 7.3%, although still down from 7.9% in the second half of September.
There are currently 308,000 jobless people in Israel compared with about 150,000 on the eve of the Covid crisis, Globes reports.
In terms of the number of people participating in the job market, however, the rate fell to 59.6% in the second half of October compared with 60.6% in the first half of the month, the Ministry of Finance reports. The number of job vacancies in October rose to 143,274 from 138,113 in September.
According to the OECD, although Israel fared better than most member countries during the Covid crisis, it is expected to be among the last in seeing its job market recover.
