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The Jobs Are Gone
Labor-intensive industries are drying up in Israel while
hi-tech companies scramble for qualified workers.
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F
actory workers in the Jor-
dan Valley town of Beit
She'an are looking for jobs
and can't find them. Mean-
while, hi-tech firms in the Tel Aviv
area are looking for employees and
can't find them.
Beit She'an's predicament
stems from the fact that the fac-
tories which once provided em-
ployment for its residents cannot,
for the most part, compete in the
Israeli market, let alone in the
world market. It is far cheaper, for
example, to import clothing from
Southeast Asia than to produce it
in Beth She'an. As a result, the Ki-
tan textile plant there has closed
down, as have many other labor-
intensive enterprises. Only 300
people are now employed in the
town's industrial zone, where a
few years ago some 3,000 came to
work.
It's exactly the opposite in the
hi-tech field, where tiny Israel has
become a world power. Today,
some 2,000 hi-tech firms already
operate and more are opening all
the time. Moreover, a fair number
of them, with annual exports of $4
billion, have aroused the interest
of foreign investors.
In 1996 alone, 18 Israeli enter-
prises of this type sold shares in
the United States, more than from
any other foreign country.
Also last year, Applied Materi-
als, a chip-equipment manufac-
turing giant in California's Silicon
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Workers in Israel prepare a building site.
°
Valley, paid $285 million to buy
two Israeli companies that make
equipment used to detect flaws in
chips. High-flying Intel began
building its third facility in Israel,
a $1.6 billion plant that will man-
ufacture memory chips.
Everything would be rosy were
it not for the fact that Israeli hi-
tech firms are finding it increas-
ingly difficult to recruit the
talented personnel required to im-
prove old products and develop
new ones.
The onset of this problem was
delayed during the period of mass
aliyah from the former Soviet
Union, when 4,000 excellent en-
gineers entered the country in a
relatively short period of time.
They had a good grounding in
mathematics and physics, and
they soon learned western oper-
ating methods. But that source of
supply has dried up and Israeli
academic institutions aren't fill-
ing the gap.
So manpower-hungry compa-
nies are signing up engineers and
computer experts who are still in
school and, at the same time, try-
ing to steal good people from one
another. This doesn't always help
them, but it certainly helps the
newspapers, all of which regular-
ly carry 10-20-page supplements
with want ads for hi-tech person-
nel.
The only real solution to the es-
timated shortage of 3,000 engi-
neers, technicians and program-
mers is to train more of them on
the one hand and to bring back ex-
patriate Israeli experts on the oth-
er. Both approaches are being
pursued and, hopefully, will event-
fially provide the people required
for Israel's booming hi-tech in-
dustries.
Much more difficult to alleviate
is the problem faced by commu-
nities that are economically de-
pendent on declining traditional
industries. For while there is great
sympathy for the men and women
who have lost their jobs in Beit
She'an and elsewhere, there is lit-
tle prospect that they will find new
ones in the foreseeable future.
❑
Job Shift Is
Inevitable
Finance Minister Dan Meridor
welcomes the transition from
old-style to new-style economic
ent,erprises.
Speaking recently at a Tel
Aviv University forum, IVIr.
Meridor declared: "It is under-
: standable that we should take
pride in products that are (IVIade
in 1441,' But we can't ignore the
fact Sgt we are a small country
with a limited local market. So'`
we must learn to specialize in
what we do best and import
goods that are better and cheap-
,
:.,er than we can produce here.7..