Israel has faced a long-running shortage of social workers, and the need rose further after the outbreak of the war with Hamas, "Iron Swords." Even so, more than 1,000 positions in local authority social services departments are still empty. A 2008 document from the Knesset Research and Information Center had already warned of a shortage in these departments, including a gap of more than 200 posts.
According to State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman’s report, released Tuesday, the situation has now flipped: the positions exist, but 1,155 of them are unfilled in the municipal welfare departments. That means 16% of the available posts are vacant. The report says the review covered the challenges facing social services departments in the wake of the war, between March and October 2025.
Englman wrote that the number of social work posts in the departments rose 15% between 2022 and 2025, from 6,192 to 7,094, but the number of vacant posts grew by 47% over the same period. He also noted that 40.4% of social workers in these departments, in posts funded by the Welfare Ministry, left their jobs between 2015 and 2022. The report adds that only part of the additional posts created because of the war were staffed, with 18% filled in 2023, 32% in 2024 and 28% in 2025.
The report says that in 2023, about 12% of Israel’s population, 1.18 million residents, received services from these departments. It also includes a public survey conducted at the comptroller’s initiative after the war began. Of 186 participating social workers, 54% said they experienced significant or very significant burnout, and 74% of 185 respondents said the workload in their departments had increased significantly or very significantly since the war started.
