Financial Crisis Will Eventually Hit Israel

Nearly one in five Israeli men between the ages of 35 and 54 do not work, including Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, says economist Dan Ben-David.

Dan Ben-David, executive director of Jerusalem-based Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, says the problem is simple: Not enough Israelis are pulling their own weight.

Officially, Israel's unemployment rate is about 8%. But that doesn't include Israeli citizens who are not trying to find work, either because they feel disenfranchised, such as many Arab Israelis, or because they've chosen a life of state-subsidized religious study, such as many ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Nearly 27% of Arab men and 65% of ultra-Orthodox Jews don't work, government figures show. The non-employment rate for ultra-Orthodox men has tripled since 1970, Ben-David told LaTi.

What worries Ben-David most is that the nonproductive part of Israel's population, which survives largely on welfare, is also the fastest growing.

"We support a lifestyle of nonworking that is pretty unparalleled in the Western world," said Ben-David, who is also a Tel Aviv University professor. "On the one hand, we have this state-of-the-art part of the economy. Then there is the rest of the country that is like a huge drag."

"Eventually it's going to break the bank," he says. "We're on trajectories that are not sustainable."