Against the background of the finance economists’ preoccupation with ultra-Orthodox employment: The survey company ‘Direct Falls’, owned by Shlomo Pilber, has been researching ultra-Orthodox society in depth for the past two years – and tonight they presented their findings on employment and non-employment in ultra-Orthodox society.
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“Not for the first time, the Treasury is planning important plans, but ones that are not relevant to the future that awaits us,” say Direct Falls.
Let’s start with the bottom line: about 78,960 ultra-Orthodox men of working age do not work at all. They constitute only 1.85% of the 4.2 million people who make up the labor force in Israel.
Many of these ultra-Orthodox are married, and about 89% of their spouses do work, most of them full-time and at a higher percentage than the national average – so these are families based on a single breadwinner in the family.
“How did we come to these results?” Ask at Direct Falls and explain: “In recent months, we have conducted field studies that included a deep mapping of the entire ultra-Orthodox population in Israel, down to the level of cities and neighborhoods.
“Our data show that the ultra-Orthodox population in Israel numbers about 1,285,000 people, which is about 13.5% of the country’s population. (We will expand on the issue of ‘who is an ultra-Orthodox’ on another occasion) “.
The data emerged as part of comprehensive in-depth studies, which included 2,500 samples from all ultra-Orthodox groups and sectors, around a wide range of many public and commercial issues.
“Some of the data related to the employment of the ultra-Orthodox, we present this evening, as stated, as part of the extensive work on the issue in recent weeks.”
And these are the data:
The vast majority of the ultra-Orthodox (70.1%) are young people up to the age of 25 who are considered below the age of employment in Israel (the age of employment according to the CBS is calculated from the age of 25).
The ultra-Orthodox men of working age number about 172,000 people, with 54.3% of them working full-time or part-time and only 45.7% in this section (about 79,000 ultra-Orthodox men as such) full-time.
In the ultra-Orthodox society there are four main factions: Hasidim, Lithuanians, Sephardim and others.
To view full size – click on the image. From Direct Falls’ Twitter
“Of these factions, the high percentage of students focuses mainly on the Lithuanian sector, and this is also the sector in which women work at a higher percentage even than the employment rate of women among the entire population in Israel,” Direct Falls explains.
The Lithuanians have chosen a reversal of roles in the family and they are also applying their ideology to the practice that advocates ‘Hamash’: living from what is.
It should be noted that the ultra-Orthodox society also spends the third decade of its life (ages 20 to 29) studying, but as we age, the percentage of unemployed decreases, and all this before we expand on the changes in the younger ultra-Orthodox generation (ages 25 to 35). Academic studies and work are growing all the time. ”
Direct Falls emphasizes: “This is just the tip of the iceberg of the revolution that is taking place in ultra-Orthodox society. “To sum up, finance officials, fashionably late, are trying to offer solutions that were important perhaps a decade ago – but are becoming irrelevant in the coming years.”