Israel Matzav

So you really want Haredim to join the workforce?

The State Comptroller's report makes it seem that the government either doesn't really want Haredim to join the workforce or is clueless about how to go about training them to do so. I suspect it's a combination of both.

No specific program to encourage haredi integration into the workforce has been devised and the Economy and Trade Ministry has not prepared an operative plan for employment, while a staff panel has not been established to deal with the issue either, the State Comptroller’s Office found.

“This is a socioeconomic mission of national importance, but the picture that arises indicates that progress in dealing with it is slight and slow,” the report states.

Many haredi men over the past 35 years have chosen to study full time in yeshivas rather than perform military service and subsequently join the workforce. Haredim postponing employment until after age 31 cost the economy NIS 4 billion in 2009, according to Treasury calculations.

Now, let's put that NIS 4 billion - which sounds like a lot of money - in perspective. 

In the taxi home from the airport on Monday, the driver was telling me about an interview with the former director general of the Finance Ministry, who reported that the tax breaks that Israel gives to its largest corporations, which are controlled by 12-18 families, come to NIS 14 billion per year - enough to balance the budget. He urged ending those tax breaks before we do anything else.  The government always claims that without those tax breaks, those corporations would leave. Well, they either can't (because they control things like food distribution and petroleum refining for local consumption) or they won't (because they aren't going to find the kind of high tech brainpower that exists here anyplace else in the world). But since we cannot directly elect our MK's, we have no say in how they vote....

So which problem should the government attack first?

But wait - there's more. Back to the first link.

One example highlighted by the report was the allocation by the Treasury of a fund to finance special study programs for haredim from 2005 to 2008. In 2008, only 50 percent of the money was used, while at the same time, requests by academic institutions to establish courses for haredim were not approved.

The State Comptroller’s Report also notes that the targets set by the government for haredi employment by 2020 are unrealistic.

It cites data from 2008, showing that the total rate of employment in the haredi sector between the ages of 25 and 64 was 48% compared with the national rate for the non-haredi Jewish population of 77%.

For haredi men, employment stood at 40%, compared with 82% for non-haredi Jews, and 57% for haredi women, compared with 74% for non-haredi Jewish women.

More recent data published by the Bank of Israel in 2012, however, shows male haredi employment at 45.6% and female haredi employment at 61.2%.

The government’s target for men by 2020 is 63%, and for 9,200 haredi males to join the workforce every year.

So how do they expect Haredim to find work? (And this doesn't even count the discrimination that Haredim routinely face in the workplace).

The answer is that they don't. The Lapid's of the country are determined to keep the Haredim a permanent underclass (at least until God forbid they become 'Israeli like us') - they just don't want to pay for it. This comparison is quite apt.

Said MK Cohen, “They promised to provide fishing rods instead of fish. They’ve cut out the fish and the rods haven’t been made yet.”

Indeed.

Labels: Haredim, Yair Lapid

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:19 AM