The Work Force

Alon Kupererd
Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research   en.jerusaleminstitute.org.il

The term “work force” describes the persons in the population, aged 15 and over, who are employed or unemployed and seeking employment. At the end of 2014, 69% of Israeli Jews aged 15 and over participated in the work force, meaning they were employed or seeking employment, in comparison to 47% among the Arab population. The rate of unemployed persons among Jews in Israel was 6% of the work force, and 8% among Arabs. 
In Jerusalem the rate of participation of Jews in the work force was 59% - lower than the average for Israel. Similarly among Arabs, the rate of participation in the work force in Jerusalem was comparatively low, at 40%.
When analyzing the data by gender we see that among Jewish men the rate of participation in the work force in Israel was 72%, while in Jerusalem the rate was only 57%.  
Among Arabs, the rate of participation of men in the work force in Israel was 66%, a bit lower than the rate in Jerusalem which was 68%.
The rate of unemployed persons is similar for the Jewish and Arab sectors and for the Israeli average and Jerusalem average, standing at 7%. 
In Israel, 66% of Jewish women participated in the work force in 2014, in comparison to 61% of the Jewish women in Jerusalem. 6% of the Jewish women in the work force in Israel were unemployed, while in Jerusalem the percentage of unemployed women was 8%.
The rate of participation of Arab women in the work force in Israel at large, at 28%, was much lower than that of Jewish women. In Jerusalem the rate of participation of Arab women in the work force was 13%, which is lower by over half in comparison to the Israeli average.
90% of Arab women in the work force in Israel were employed, meaning that among Arab women in Israel, there was an unemployment rate of 10%. In Jerusalem 85% of Arab women in the work force were employed, equaling an unemployment rate of 15% among the work force.
This data regarding participation of Arab women in the work force in Jerusalem is especially interesting due to the fact that it shows us that even when an Arab woman decides she would like to be employed, her chances of finding a job are lower than the chances of an Arab woman in Israel. 
In regards to impact of the level of education on work force participation, it is noticeable that among Arab women in Jerusalem, the rate of participation in the work force was higher among women with a higher level of education. 8% of women with secondary school education participated in the work force. 2% of all Arab women living in Jerusalem have attained a Master's degree - 66% of them are in the work force.
This is true also considering Arab women in Israel at large – 28% of women with secondary school education participated in the work force, compared with 88% of women with Master’s degrees.
This effect of education on the motivation to participate in the work force also exists to some extent among women in the Jewish sector, but is much more significant among Arab women. 

Sources: Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem 2016 

Jerusalem Workforce

Yair Assaf-Shapira

May 1st, which marks both International Workers' Day and Jerusalem Day, presents a good opportunity to take a look at the workforce in Jerusalem. According to new Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem, to be published on Jerusalem Day, there were 293,200 workers employed in the city in 2013. This number is higher than the number of workers in Haifa (167,000), and lower than the number in Tel Aviv (387,800).

The majority of those who work in Jerusalem (224,700) also reside in the city. However, about a quarter of them (23%, or 68,600 workers) live outside of Jerusalem and commute to the city for work. Of these, 30,600 live in Judea and Samaria; 17,500 in the Jerusalem District (adjacent to the city from the west, including Mevaseret Zion, Beit Shemesh, Abu Ghosh, Kiriat Yearim and the Mateh Yehuda regional council); 16,600 in Tel Aviv and Israel's center; and approximately 3,800 reside in the north, the south and in Haifa. While it is clear that more people commute from areas closer to the city, a significant number of workers also come from the center to work in Jerusalem. In comparison, the number of Jerusalemites who work in Tel Aviv is lower: 10,300 people.

Of the workers employed in Jerusalem, 154,400 are men and 138,800 are women. In general, men's commutes to work tend to be longer than those of women, and the greater the distance, the less likely women are to travel it. Indeed, most of the workers coming from outside the city to work in Jerusalem are men. From Tel Aviv and the center, for example, 9,700 men travel to work in Jerusalem as compared to 7,000 women. The areas closer to the city present a different picture: from Judea and Samaria, a similar number of women (15,400) and men (15,200) commute to Jerusalem, and from the Jerusalem District, more women (9,500) commute to Jerusalem than men (8,000).

This trend in terms of distance and gender also holds true regarding the commute in the opposite direction, i.e. for those who live in Jerusalem and work outside of the city. This direction is traveled by 24,300 men, and only by 9,700 women, but, like we see above, closer numbers of male (4,800) and female (3,100) workers commute to the areas closer to Jerusalem (Jerusalem District and Judea and Samaria), while almost four times more men (8,100) than women (2,200) travel to work in the center and Tel Aviv.

The new train line connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, currently under construction, may change the picture by increasing the number of workers traveling between the cities in both directions.

Metropolitan Jerusalem

Yair Assaf-Shapira

A metropolis is defined as an urban area that includes a main (metropolitan) city, which constitutes the core of the metropolis, and other surrounding localities that have relations with it. There is, generally, interaction between the satellite communities of the metropolis and the metropolitan city for the purposes of employment, education, culture, shopping, and the like. The intensity of relations with the metropolitan city determines whether a locality is defined as part of the metropolis or not. Recently the Central Bureau of Statistics released new definitions for the metropolises in Israel, with Jerusalem included for the first time. Also included were the metropolises of Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Be’er Sheva. The definitions were based on the rate of employed residents of each locality who work in the main employment centers of the metropolis. About 75% of Israel’s population resides within these metropolitan areas.

Metropolitan Jerusalem has been defined as stretching from Jerusalem to Beit Shemesh in the west, and including Israeli localities in the West Bank, up to Mitzpe Yericho in the east, to Ofra in the north to Gush Etzion in the south. In all, the metropolis comprises 86 localities, and has a population of 1,164,000 residents. Metropolitan Jerusalem is the second largest, after Metropolitan Tel Aviv, which numbers 3,642,000. The metropolises of Haifa and Be’er Sheva have populations of 891,100 and 354,900 residents, respectively. 

We can learn about the character of the metropolis by looking at the population of the core city as a proportion of the entire metropolitan populace (the weight of the core city within the metropolitan area), both in spatial terms – how concentrated or scattered it is– and in economic terms – the weight of the metropolitan satellite communities and hence their potential contribution to the prosperity of the core city.

This factor varies greatly among Israel’s metropolitan areas. The population of Tel Aviv-Jaffa constitutes only 11% of the entire metropolis’s population, whereas in Jerusalem the population of the city constitutes 71% of the total for the entire metropolis. For Haifa and Be’er Sheva, the weight of the core city in each metropolis is 31% and 56%, respectively. Accordingly, the relative weight of the metropolitan city within the metropolis is lowest for Tel Aviv – an indication of the large number of residents with ties to the city, a fact that correlates with the economic prosperity of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Jerusalem’s relative weight is the highest, correlating with the low weight of the metropolitan satellite communities and indicating that Jerusalem provides services and employment primarily to its own residents. 

Source of data: Central Bureau of Statistics

In Jerusalem Women Earn More

Eitan Bluer

Jerusalem’s job market is characterized by large salary discrepancies among the various population groups. In addition, there are large discrepancies in the rate of participation in the workforce among the various groups. Relatively low rates of participation in the workforce are found among haredi (ultra-orthodox) men and among Arab women. These characteristics have created a unique phenomenon in Jerusalem, with a relatively low gap between the average monthly salaries of men and of women, but a large gap in their average number of work hours. In 2010 the average (gross) monthly salary of an employee in Jerusalem was NIS 7,300, which was lower than the figures for Tel Aviv (NIS 10,200) and Israel (NIS 8,600). An in-depth analysis of salary by gender indicates a gap of 29% between the average (gross) monthly salary of men in Jerusalem (NIS 8,100) and that of women (NIS 6,300). This gap was lower than the figures for Tel Aviv and Israel, where the average salary of men was higher than that of women by 51%.

The opposite pattern exists with respect to the gap between the number of average weekly work hours of men and that of women. The average number of weekly work hours of men in Jerusalem (44 hours per week) was higher than that of women (33 hours per week) by 33%. This gap was higher than the figure for Tel Aviv, where the average number of weekly work hours of men was higher than the figure for women by 13%. In Israel the gap was 25%.

These two phenomena have created a situation in which the average (gross) hourly wage of women in Jerusalem (NIS 43) was higher than that of men (NIS 41) by 5%. This differs from the situation in Israel, where the average hourly wage of women (NIS 43) was lower than that of men (NIS 51) by 16%, and in Tel Aviv, where the average hourly wage of women (NIS 50) was lower than that of men (NIS 59) by 15%. 

Data source: Income Survey 2012, Central Bureau of Statistics