A special committee appointed by Labor Minister Yosef Almogi predicted today a relatively high oversupply of workers with academic degrees within the next five years.
The committee anticipated that the surplus will be especially high among graduates of the natural sciences (1800 by 1978) and in the social sciences and humanities, 3700 or a surplus of 24.1 percent of the manpower supply in that year.
New immigrants will be the first to suffer, according to the committee, because even when there was a high demand, new immigrants with college degrees had greater difficulty in finding jobs than graduates of Israeli universities. The committee also projected a surplus of engineers (1200-4.9 percent) and physicians (1500-12.9 percent). However, it expects a shortage in the number of teachers with academic degrees. Almogi said the Cabinet will have to take these findings into consideration and that the Education Ministry will have to consider them in planning higher education.
He said there is a $100 million fund to help employers who need to make special efforts to hire academics and a $10 million fund to facilitate the employment of new immigrant scientists.
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