High tech employment rate first crossed 9% • Average wage - more than NIS 28,000 • Minister Eli Cohen: "We must work to preserve Israeli innovation and minds in Israel"
High Tech Worker // Illustration Illustration: GettyImages
The volume of high-tech jobs breaks. In 2019, for the first time, the percentage of employed in the high-tech professions crossed the threshold of 9% of all employees in the economy, without regard to the communications industry.
The first data published here is based on the CBS data being processed by the Ministry of Economy's Innovation Authority. The increase in the number of high-tech employees reflects an absolute increase of some 24,000 new employees in the past year, and a total of 319,000 were employed as high-tech employees. The communications industry.
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The Innovation Authority welcomes the data and explains it in an effort by the Council for Higher Education and Higher Education to increase the number of high-tech students in the academy and the Innovation Authority's efforts to diversify the high-tech entry channels, such as the "Programming Patrol" course that encourages computer science and non-academic training , Dedicated tracks to encourage entrepreneurship among Arabs, ultra-Orthodox women and other routes to be launched soon.
In addition, the Innovation Authority works to promote "high-end" high-tech companies - companies whose business base is located in Israel, and which employs a variety of employees in addition to programmers and engineers such as marketing, support, operations and manufacturing. As of 2018, more than 300 "intact" companies are operating in Israel, accounting for 11% of all companies in the economy - the highest figure ever.
Mission: Preserving minds
According to Minister of Economy and Industry MK Eli Cohen, increasing the volume of workers in the high-tech market is an important task in light of the industry's contribution to the Israeli economy and exports. This is even more important given the rise in the number of high-tech workers following years of stagnation in joining the industry. We must work to preserve Israeli innovation and minds in the country and provide them with the right platform to staff the many high-tech jobs offered. "
Recently, the chairman of the National Economic Council, Prof. Avi Simhon, presented data showing that the average monthly salary of undergraduates in computer science at universities working in the high-tech industry was more than NIS 28,000 in the two years following their studies - more than twice as many law graduates - Only 7,500 of biology graduates.
The data is true for 2017. Simhon's predecessor, Prof. Eugene Kendall, is encouraging of the new data but claims that the government is expecting more work. "If we act properly, we can reach 12% of Israeli high-tech workers in a decade," Kendall tells Israel Today. According to Kendall, who currently heads the Startup Nation Central Association and serves as a professor of finance at the Hebrew University's School of Business, "we must ensure that the young people go to study technology and that the curriculum will give them the tools to integrate into the job market."