Employment Boom Not All It Seems

Record-breaking low unemployment masks an increase in the number of part-time and low-paid jobs in Israel, Globes reported on Monday, quoting a Bank Leumi report.

The data showed that in July there was a decline in the number of people employed in full-time jobs, paralleled by an uptick of 23,700 people working in part-time jobs, the largest such rise since November 2015.

Employment increase came mostly in low-paid fields, while employment dropped in high-paid fields, according to the head of Leumi Capital Markets Macroeconomic Research Department David Reznik.

“About 50 percent of the new workers in the period between the first quarter of 2014 and the second quarter of 2016 were employed in commerce, hospitality services and food, healthcare and education,” Reznik wrote, “The average nominal wages in these sectors were lower than the average in the economy by 12 percent to 54 percent.”