The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) said last Thursday that Israel’s unemployment rate dropped sharply in 2014 and in the final quarter of last year.
The unemployment rate on average for all of last year for people over age 15 for 2014 was 5.9%, down from 6.2% in 2013.
The CBS noted that the decline came in spite of the fact that economic growth slowed last year, in part due to last summer’s Operation Protective Edge. Nevertheless, the economy generated more than enough jobs to meet a swelling supply of workers.
The CBS said the number of people in the workforce grew by 223,000 last year to 3.78 million. The labor force participation rate, which includes working age people either holding a job or actively seeking one, climbed to 64.2% of the adult population from 63.7% in 2013.
High tech accounted for 9.1% of all employees in 2014 as a whole. The unemployment rate among Jews was 5%, compared with 6.1% among the Arab population, down from 5.3% for Jews and 7.2% for Arabs in 2013.
