More new immigrants to Israel have jobs than is generally believed, particularly in the younger age group, according to a recent national survey.
Those in the country for more than two years enjoy the same rate of employment as that of the population at large: 80 percent of men and 50 percent of women, according to the survey.
The prestigious JDC-Brookdale Institute in Jerusalem questioned 1,200 newcomers between the ages of 25 and 64 in the survey, which was commissioned by the Israeli government and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Half the immigrants are in jobs they describe as “appropriate to their professional background and qualifications.”
The major problem area is the 55-plus age group, which has the greatest difficulty finding suitable employment. After two years in Israel, only half the men and 16 percent of the women in this group have found jobs, the survey says.
The influx of newcomers from republics of the former Soviet Union has changed employment patterns in Israel. The number of engineers has doubled and the number of doctors has risen by 70 percent.
Of the 425,000 immigrants who arrived over the past three years, 35 percent of those from the former Soviet Union have academic or scientific occupational backgrounds, compared to nine percent of the Israeli labor force. Twenty-eight percent of the olim are interested in running their own businesses and 8 percent of this number have actually taken practical steps toward achieving this goal, the survey found.
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