The burgeoning crisis across the global hi-tech sector and consequent mass layoffs seem to creep into the Israeli market ever faster as jobless claims continued to pile up in December 2022, a new report released Sunday shows.
According to the Israeli Employment Service, jobless claims among hi-tech workers have climbed by almost 20% last month, with software developers and analysts bearing most of the brunt of job losses with a 19.1% jump in jobless claims. Meanwhile, claims grew by 17.6% among ICT technicians and engineers.
This comes against the background of expanding rounds of mass layoffs in big tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Intel and others that combined have seen tens of thousands of tech workers worldwide being handed their walking papers.
Data point to a persistent trend in the Israeli labor market since April. While the number of unemployment claimants increased and stood at 88,800 in December, a 0.66% rise compared to November, the number of income support claimants fell to only 54,400, one of the lowest figures recorded in two decades, compared to 55,200 in the previous month.
In December, the job vacancy rate in Israel stood at 1.08, meaning that approximately 108 job seekers applied for every 100 vacant positions, indicating that the labor market is very tight and affords job seekers multiple employment opportunities.
For comparison, in December 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the job vacancy rate stood at 1.74. Overall, December's data is fairly consistent with numbers recorded throughout 2022, averaging 1.04.