The ministerial committee on employment will meet shortly to consider ominous signs of unemployment, particularly in industrial plants in new development areas. Although employment remains high and there are still more jobs available than there are applicants for them, experts fear that the recent wave of mass dismissals may portend trouble in the immediate future.
About 40 plants throughout the country either closed down this year or dismissed workers at an average rate of about 100 per plant. A total of 3500 industrial workers found themselves without jobs, though most of them had little difficulty finding new employment. According to Labor statistics, about 22,000 persons applied for work in August, 3000 above the average for the previous months. The number of job openings registered with the Labor Ministry’s placement office dropped from 6500 to 4500 in August.
Labor Minister Moshe Baram and Finance Minister Yehoshua Rabinowitz are concerned that unemployment may develop into a serious problem. Rabinowitz has said repeatedly that he does not subscribe to the view that unemployment is an effective means to curb inflation. The government is especially worried over the dismissal of industrial workers. Its declared policy has been to shift the labor force from service to productive industries.
Employers in Jerusalem say that unemployment has been recorded only in the Jewish sector of the labor market. Most Jerusalem industrial plants are manned by Arab workers and many jobs are going begging. Want ads have proliferated in East Jerusalem Arabic newspapers. “It is not that there is no work. The problem is simply that Jewish workers are very choosy,” one employer said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
