By: Jerusalem Post Staff – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com
Unemployment during lockdown in October was nearly double what it was in September.
Some 22.7% of Israelis, 938,000 people, were unemployed at the height of the second coronavirus lockdown, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Calcalist reported. The statistics refer to the first half of October and are based on a poll of the workforce.
In the month before the second lockdown, unemployment was at 11.5%, according to the bureau.
The definition of unemployment used in this report is the bureau’s broad definition of unemployment that includes those who are unemployed, those on unpaid leave (measured by the metric of if they have worked at in the week of the poll) and those who lost their job during the pandemic and are not currently seeking work.
Without accounting for those who are not currently looking for work, unemployment stands at 20.7%.