A new Service for Employment report on the “revolving door” of furloughs says emergency events repeatedly push the same Israelis out of work. It finds that 71% of all women furloughed during “Operation Rising Lion” had already been laid off at least once in one of the six earlier emergency periods of the past six years, three COVID lockdowns and three rounds of fighting.
The pattern is especially strong among care workers, sales staff, cleaners and printing workers. About 78% of nursing caregivers registered as job seekers during “Operation Rising Lion” had also registered in another emergency, while 75% of sales and cleaning job seekers and 79% of printing workers had done so as well. The report says the likelihood of furlough drops as the ability to work remotely rises, and that women, ultra-Orthodox Israelis and people up to age 34 are hit repeatedly because they are overrepresented in jobs tied to outside work, crowding or in-person contact.
The report says women’s job-seeker registrations rose 173% in March, the first month of “Operation Rising Lion,” while men’s rose 131%. Among occupations, beverage pourers and waiters saw a 661% jump in job seekers in March 2026 compared with February. The data also shows repeated harm to the same individuals, not just the same professions, with half of those registered during the operation having been pushed out of the labor market at least three times in emergency periods over the past six years, and more than a third four times.
Service for Employment director general Inbal Meshash said the revolving-door phenomenon causes “a heavy price,” including cumulative harm to social rights, job security and pension savings, and urged adoption of more advanced flexible furlough models that combine partial work with expanded remote work. The Finance Ministry opposes such flexibility, warning it would create room for widespread false reporting. The report also notes a faster recovery after each crisis: two years after COVID, 12 months after “Swords of Iron,” about four months after “With All Due Respect,” and two months after “Operation Rising Lion” job seekers fell 54% to about 180,000 by the end of May, close to the roughly 155,000 before the operation.
