The unemployment rate in the economy in the second half of November fell to 4.3% compared to 4.7% in the first half, the Central Bureau of Statistics announced today (Monday).
The broad unemployment rate fell in the second half of November to 6.1% from 6.7% in the first half. These are 262,000 people who do not participate in the labor force. This definition includes people who stopped moving due to dismissal or closure of the workplace from March 2020, employed persons who were temporarily absent from work all week due to reasons related to Corona and the unemployed in the economy. The proportion of employed persons who were temporarily absent due to Corona-related reasons reached 19,900 people (0.5% of the labor force) in the second half of November, and the unemployment rate in the economy stands at 4.5% of the labor force.
Recall that the data are still affected by disruptions created as a result of the corona crisis and therefore the Treasury has recently moved to address mainly employment data. If at the beginning of November there was a positive increase when the employment rate increased during the pre-crisis days, in the second half the employment rate fell to 60.8%.
At the same time, the CBS published data on job vacancies in the economy in November. These rose to 5.03% in November compared to 4.99% in October. These are 143,478 job vacancies waiting to be filled with 2.7 million employed persons. Occupations, the most notable of which was an increase in November, were software developers (12,565 jobs), engineers (16,350 jobs), sales staff (10,269 jobs) and waiters and bartenders (10,666 jobs).
In the hospitality and food services industry, if in 2019 the number of job vacancies was 24,519 jobs compared to 215,274 employed persons, in November the number of job vacancies is similar and even higher, 25,362 jobs, but the number of employed persons is smaller and amounts to 195,252 jobs.