Israel’s Tech Job Market Rebounds in 2025, but Software Developers Lag
Israel’s high-tech labor market showed a modest recovery in 2025 after a decline in 2024. Total employment in the sector rose 2.3%, from 396,000 workers in 2024 to 405,000 in 2025, while job vacancies increased from 4% to 4.8%. The gains came from technical jobs, which grew 4%, while nontechnical roles fell 0.8%.
The rebound did not extend to software developers. Their unemployment rate climbed to 3.5%, and there were about 8,000 jobseekers in software development and systems analysis. The figures come from the high-tech chapter of Israel’s 2025 labor market report by the Labor Ministry, due to be published in the coming days.
High tech remains a central pillar of the Israeli economy, accounting for about 20% of GDP, more than half of exports, more than 400,000 workers, or roughly 11.5% of the labor force, and 36% of income tax revenue from wages. Average pay in the sector is 2.7 times higher than in the rest of the economy.
After years of rapid expansion, hiring slowed sharply in 2023 and 2024, when employment fell by more than 1% from 401,000 to 396,000. The ministry attributed that slowdown to weaker investment and hiring amid global deceleration, international market uncertainty, high interest rates, political and social instability in Israel in 2023, and the effects of the war in Gaza, which deterred foreign investors. In 2025, vacancies in high tech rose to 4.8%, above the 4.5% rate in the broader economy. According to the Employment Service, high-tech jobseekers doubled since 2022 and reached a record 16,300 by the end of 2025, with software developers and systems analysts making up about 51% of them, or more than 8,000.
Jobify said 8,000 to 10,000 high-tech jobs are posted each month, including about 4,000 software development roles. That field has been stagnant since mid-2024, while data and artificial intelligence jobs grew about 50%. Labor Ministry Director General Rubi Shemesh said the market is shifting away from traditional software roles toward AI, data and hardware, while support functions are shrinking.
