Employment Policy Response to COVID-19 Crisis
Zvi Eckstein, Tali Larom and Avihai Lifschitz
This website uses cookies for functional reasons and to improve your browsing experience. By continuing to use our website or by closing this notice you consent to this use. For further Information >>
XZvi Eckstein, Tali Larom and Avihai Lifschitz
The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown measures implemented to curb it triggered an unprecedented economic crisis, manifested primarily in a surge in the number of job seekers (unemployed and furloughed employees), which has exceeded one million. Many of them are young people who earned lower-than-average wages and workers from the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and Israeli-Arab sectors, where employment rates had only started to rise over the last few years. Now, with the easing of restrictions on economic activity in most sectors, there is a need for a policy which emphasizes bringing back to work as many employees as possible, in order to raise the GDP, reduce poverty rates, and prevent a situation where workers ousted from employment end up in long-term unemployment, which makes it extremely difficult to get back into work.