Fewer Israelis Are Seeking to End Their Residency, but Emigration Remains High

New data from Israel’s National Insurance Institute show a slowdown in the surge of Israelis formally asking to end their residency. In 2025, 6,651 people requested to stop being residents of Israel, down from 7,756 in 2024. The procedure is an official declaration that a person’s center of life has moved abroad, and it means losing eligibility for National Insurance allowances, grants and services.

Of the 2025 applicants, 4,656 were Israeli residents and 1,995 were new immigrants. In 2024, the figure was split between 4,151 Israeli residents and 3,605 new immigrants. Overall, residency was ended for 35,625 Israelis in 2025, including both people who applied voluntarily and those whose residency ended automatically after a long stay abroad. The comparable 2024 figure was 46,385.

The largest group of applicants in 2025 was aged 31 to 40, with 2,259 requests, including 565 from new immigrants. The next largest group was ages 41 to 50, with 1,648 requests, including 373 from new immigrants. The National Insurance Institute said the rise seen in 2024 had eased. “While in 2024 we saw a jump in the numbers for ending residency in Israel, in 2025 we are seeing moderation in the figures, especially among new immigrants. We continue to monitor the data and hope it will keep declining,” the agency said.

However, the decline in formal residency cancellations does not necessarily mean fewer people are leaving Israel. A Knesset research and information report presented in early June to the Committee on Aliyah, Absorption and Diaspora found that about half of those who left Israel since 2022 were ages 20 to 44, even though that age group is a much smaller share of the population. The report also contradicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s earlier claim that most leavers were new immigrants from the war in Ukraine. In 2022, 20,124 people left within two years of immigrating, compared with 39,241 who were not in that category. In 2023, 27,973 were relatively recent immigrants, versus 54,791 longer-term residents.

The report said the number of veteran leavers, meaning Israelis born in the country or immigrants who had lived there for at least five years, reached about 51,000 in 2023, up 53% from 2021. In 2024, Israeli-born citizens made up 52% of all people leaving the country, compared with 48% born abroad. It also found that emigrants are far more educated than the general public: 33.2% held a bachelor’s degree, compared with 21.5% in the population, 23.5% had a master’s degree, compared with 11.9%, and 3.7% had doctorates, compared with 0.8% overall.