Imagine if someone told you half the men in your community do not work. How would you feel about that? And what if, in your next-door community, 75 per cent of the women did not participate in the workforce?
Such a scenario sounds unreal in today’s western world. However, regretfully, it is the reality of two major communities in Jerusalem today.
Half of the men in Jerusalem’s Strictly Orthodox population and three out of four women in Jerusalem’s Arab population do not participate in the workforce.
Among Israel’s major cities, Jerusalem has the highest number of people living below the poverty line: 45 per cent of the city’s population.
But things are starting to change for the better.
The latest edition of Jerusalem’s Statistical Yearbook, published annually by the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, reveals a constant growth in workforce participation rates among Strictly Orthodox men and Arab women, the two financially weakest population groups nationally and in Jerusalem.
The Israeli Strictly Orthodox population is one of the few communities in the world in which women are the main breadwinners, as men are expected to dedicate their lives to yeshiva (the study of Torah) and receive state stipends for doing so.
And yet the numbers show that 49 per cent of Strictly Orthodox men of working age (25-64) participate in the workforce, the highest figure ever recorded in Jerusalem. While an encouraging trend, this figure is still dramatically lower than the labour force participation rate of Jerusalem’s Strictly Orthodox women (72 per cent) or the general participation rate of men in Israel (86 per cent).
This trend of increasing participation is part of a deeper change in the Strictly Orthodox population of Jerusalem. There are a growing number of such students in higher education, in the army and national civic service, among internet users, and in several other indicators that point to a growing level of integration with the general population.
In some ways, the Arab population of Jerusalem is a mirror image. Here, it is the women with extremely low labour force participation rates, with only 27 per cent of working age Arab women participating in the workforce. This figure is low even in comparison to the low participation rate of Arab women across Israel, which stands at 37 per cent.
However, behind this lies an encouraging trend in the Arab population in Jerusalem. In just three years, this figure grew nine points to to 27 per cent. With this leap, workforce participation rate of Arab women in Jerusalem could soon align with the rest of Arab women in Israel.
This rapid growth in participation rates, alongside a drop in birth rates, indicate a process of modernisation in Jerusalem’s Arab population, supported in recent years by local and national investments of public and philanthropic funds in the development of East Jerusalem and the Arab population of the city.
With growing market-demand for high-quality employees and the pull of untapped human potential, Arab women and Strictly Orthodox men may be the answer to Jerusalem’s extensive poverty rates and boost its economic growth.
Lior Schillat is the Director General of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, supported by the Jerusalem Foundation
