Follow
Dec. 30, 2020
For the first time in 20 years, the official National Insurance Institute poverty report won’t be published in 2020 but be postponed by at least half a year, according to Director General Meir Spiegler. The report was supposed to present the data on poverty and inequality in Israel for 2019, and the government investment in preventing poverty and inequality, compared to other countries.
Like the reports on the preparedness of the health care system prior to the pandemic, the public was supposed to receive data about investment in the social safety net before a serious socioeconomic crisis. According to an NII source, “Clearly this report wouldn’t flatter the government and would show that we’ve reached this difficult situation with COVID with a porous social security system, and allowances and investment that are too low by any criterion.”
6 shares
A man walks through a closed market amid a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, in Tel Aviv, September 18, 2020. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
With Israel in its third nationwide lockdown, the National Insurance Institute’s director-general Meir Spiegler estimated Monday that “around 100,000 will join those entitled to unemployment benefits in the coming closure.”
According to the NII, 620,000 Israelis are currently relying on unemployment benefits, of whom some 400,000 have done so since the pandemic reached Israel in March, battering the economy.
Spiegler’s prediction would take that number to over 700,000.
In December, prior to the latest lockdown, 24,000 Israelis returned to their workplaces from furlough. But simultaneously almost 10,000 lost their jobs.