Unemployment in Israel remained low in October at just 3%, seasonally adjusted, unchanged from September, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports. The rate of participation in the workforce also remained unchanged in October at 60.9%.
The number of job vacancies in October was 149,000 – up from the September, and not far below the peak of job vacancies in mid-2022. The job market is tight and strong, as reflected in the strong GDP growth data for the third quarter, which was published yesterday, and which will make it difficult to cut the interest rate.
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This month’s unemployment report also included a comparison with the situation on the eve of the war, in September 2023, as well as the situation two years earlier, in September 2021. In 2021, the number of job vacancies stood was139,000, decreasing with the economic slowdown to only 115,000 in 2023. However, as of October 2025, this rate had jumped back to almost 150,000 job vacancies.
This strength can also be seen in the “information and communications” sector (mainly high-tech), where the number of job vacancies fell from 18,400 in 2021 to only 10,400 in 2023, but since then there has been some recovery back to 13,800 vacancies. Not as many job vacancies as at the height of the tech boom in 2021, but stronger than on the eve of the war. The absolute number of employees in this sector has risen to 260,000 compared with 213,000 in 2021 and 249,000 in 2023. All this, even though last month there was a slight fall of 2% in vacant positions for software developers.
In the construction industry, which suffers from an acute shortage of workers, there has been a significant and consistent increase in the number job vacancies, from 11,400 in 2021, to 13,900 in 2023, and currently 18,600 job vacancies. This even though the absolute number of jobs has continued to rise and is currently 216,000.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on November 17, 2025.
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