The subcommittee of the Economics Committee for the Advancement of High-Tech in Israel, chaired by MK Ron Retz, convened this morning (Sunday) for its first meeting. The committee discusses the development of the high-tech industry and the reduction of the shortage of skilled manpower – training workers and integrating them into the industry. MK Katz said at the beginning of the debate that the intention is to find ways to deal with the shortage of manpower in high-tech.
The director general of the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, Hila Haddad, said that in order for the government to know where it is right to invest, data is needed. According to her, it is clear that we need to invest in populations that are under-represented in the industry, but to help them, we need a data-based policy. She even referred to the periphery and noted that discussions are being held with the Ministry of Education to start a code-writing project later this year. The representative of the Ministry of Education, Aharon Shachar, noted that the participating schools will select according to criteria of periphery and under-represented populations and will involve all students.
Rinat Cohen, Deputy Director of the Vocational Training Division at the Ministry of Economy, said that the division operates a variety of training tracks and between 2019-2021, about 11,000 students were trained in the various tracks, with 53% earning above the median salary and earning an average of NIS 10,100 per month.
The chairman of the high-tech association, Marian Cohen, said that the shortage is large, noting that in Ukraine about 25-40 thousand workers are directly employed, and this is in addition to “a shortage of between 15 and 40 thousand workers in the country, every number wins.” Cohen therefore called for giving it national priority, and estimated that the aggregate shortage reaches about 100,000 workers.
The Deputy Director of the Investment Authority in the Ministry of Economy, Efrat Debash, said that there are paths that have been opened to the Arab public in the past, and that the authority will be happy to receive additional budgets and expand training to additional populations. She noted that in previous years the budget was NIS 4 million a year, while last year the authority managed to increase it to NIS 20 million and trained 363 employees in junior positions.
Jolt’s marketing director Doron Aaronson said the company trained over 1,100 students last year and to increase the number of employees in the industry from 10% to 15% of all employees need to invest in training salespeople, business development and more and not just people with a high math level .
Kama-Tech CEO Moshe Friedman referred to the training of ultra-Orthodox men and women and said that the budgets are insufficient and it is possible to train 10 times more people. He added that there is a program in collaboration with the working arm in the Ministry of Economy, to train 400 women, and it is possible to double that. Haddad referred to this and said that there are quite a few budgets for the training of the ultra-Orthodox, but it should be seen that the programs do not produce a layer of inferior workers. She added that there is a very large gap in English studies, both in the ultra-Orthodox society and in the general society.
The head of the School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University, Sivan Toledo, said that the university trains about 300 students a year and the growth rates are very small. He noted that the average salary of graduates 5 years after graduation is about 39,000 shekels a month.
MK Yoav Ben-Zur said that there is a cynical exploitation of the ultra-Orthodox women’s desire to be part of the work circle, and said that his daughter is a junior but she has difficulty finding a supportive work environment. “Work capacity and work ethic are high and have no equal, so we need to consider how to improve their conditions,” he said.
MK Katz summed up the discussion and said that what has been so far has not been sufficient and more needs to be done. He added that in subsequent discussions the committee will continue to examine how to measure what has been done to date and adapt the plans for the development and expansion of the industry. MK Katz stated that he is committed to this issue and said that he would like to hear that Israeli companies employ Israeli workers, and do not accept workers from around the world. According to him, expanding the number of employees in the industry will also help deal with the cost of living in Israel.
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