At the Calcalist and Migdal Financial Future conference, Mercantile Bank CEO Barak Nardi said the Haredi sector in Israel has become a far stronger economic force than many outsiders realize. He argued that the community now has 80% female employment, 75% home ownership, and a sharply growing share of investment-property owners, with one in ten families holding more than one asset.
Nardi said Mercantile is the largest bank in the Arab sector and the fastest-growing bank in the Haredi segment. He described a new Haredi middle class that has doubled over the past decade, fueled first by labor-force participation and now by higher wages, education, and consumption. According to him, in 2002 only 50% of Haredi women worked, while today the rate is above 80%, leaving the gap with non-Haredi Jewish women at less than two percentage points.
He pointed to higher education as another driver, saying nearly 19,000 Haredi students are now enrolled in academia, four times the 2010 figure, and almost 70% are women. In housing, he said Haredim own homes at a 75% rate, above the general population, and that over two decades the share of families with investment property tripled.
Nardi also said consumption is changing, with more brands, cars, vacations and fine-kosher restaurants, and that financial behavior is shifting toward kosher investment products tied directly to the S&P 500 and free of Sabbath-related concerns. He added that internet use among Haredim has risen from under 30% a little more than a decade ago to nearly 70%, citing the online ordering platform Mishnat Yosef, which he said generates 500 million shekels a year without any branches. Nardi concluded that understanding the new Haredi middle class is key to identifying one of Israel’s major growth engines.
