Yisrael Goralnik, Director General of the Ministry of Social Betterment, disclosed Sunday that 75,000 Israelis are presently unemployed, representing 5.2 percent of the country’s work force, compared to 39,000 or 2.9 percent of the work force in 1979. The doubling of the unemployment rate in the past two years may force the government to initiate large-scale work projects, including the construction of public buildings cancelled for budgetary reasons, he said, unless the situation improves in the near future. According to Goralnik, unemployment is worst in the northern townships such as Aful, Migdal Haemek, Upper Nazareth, Tiberias, Safad, Kiryat Shemona, Karmiel and Acre.
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