Israel’s unemployment rate rises to 19.5%

Jerusalem, Feb 15 : The Covid pandemic crisis has led to a spike in Israel’s unemployment count to around 805,000, said the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Israeli Employment Service on Monday.
With the new figure, the unemployment rate in Israel stands at 19.5 percent, compared to 13.9 percent in early January, 22.7 per cent in last mid-October and a peak of 27.5 per cent at the end of April 2020 with more than 1 million unemployed people.
This is a significant increase compared to 565,000 unemployed in Israel as recorded in January 4, Xinhua reported.
The increase in the number of the unemployed is explained by the third nationwide Covid-19 lockdown imposed on December 27, 2020, with some of its restrictions still in effect.
The unemployment rate in the country stood at 3.9 per cent before the pandemic outbreak last February in Israel.
Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from IANS service.