The number of employees in the high-tech industry has fallen by 10% since April last year, to 427,000 in December. This means that the number of employees in the industry will return to average levels in 2022. In the final month of 2023, a slight decrease was recorded from 429,000 in November to 427,000. The number of employees increased at the beginning of the year and reached record highs in March and April. The number subsequently declined due to judicial reform and the global recession, hitting a low of 411,000 in August. In October, the number of people partially recovered to 442,000, but due to the effects of the war, the number of people decreased again.
The annual personnel survey data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on Monday also shows that the number of people employed in high-tech industries will increase by 3.2% to 441,000 for the full year 2023. It turned out that there was. The study also shows that changes in the number of high-tech workers have a larger impact on employment for men than for women. The number of male workers in the tech industry peaked at 325,000 in April and has declined by 15% since then (through November), while the number of women in the workforce has declined to 150,000 from the peak recorded in June. This was a decrease of just 2.5% from 7,000.
The unemployment rate in the classical sense (unemployed people looking for work) decreased from 3.8% (163,000 people) in 2022 to 3.4% (153,000 people) in 2023. However, since these are annual average data, their relevance is limited to the years in which unusual events occur. Unemployment in the classical sense was of little significance at the end of the year, when the wave of unpaid leave began. The classic unemployment rate in December was 3.1%, or 140,000 people.
