Israel plans to expand foreign workforce by 100,000 by 2027

Population and Immigration Authority Director General Boaz Yosef says Israel is moving toward a much larger foreign-worker system, especially in construction. In a wide-ranging interview, he said the current target is about 330,000 foreign workers, with an additional 100,000 planned by 2027, plus 26,000 more for the metro project. He also said there are already about 45,000 undocumented foreign workers in Israel, and that the country is preparing to add another 120 inspectors to deal with the problem.

Yosef, who now heads one of Israel’s largest government agencies, said the construction sector has struggled since the October 7 Hamas attack, after the government froze entry of nearly 80,000 Palestinian workers and thousands of foreign workers left the country. The emergency response raised the foreign-worker quota to about 336,000, and the number physically in Israel has passed 200,000, later reaching 240,000, he said. State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman criticized the expansion in an April 2026 report, saying it was approved without proper planning and created deeper dependence on foreign labor.

Yosef defended the government’s bilateral recruitment model, saying Israel needs more agreements with more countries to create competition and reduce dependence on any single source. He rejected criticism that the system has brought in unskilled labor, saying some workers are reassigned if they are not fit for construction, and that Israel cannot replace Palestinian workers overnight. He said some cases of workers arriving in the wrong sector are inevitable during wartime expansion, but denied the policy had failed.

He also discussed the growing problem of “runaway” workers who leave their assigned jobs for the unregulated labor market. Yosef said the state is working to improve enforcement and to let people renew passports from home, with digital services, more self-service stations, and two new digital-only offices in central Israel. He said two specialized visa offices have also been opened. On the shortage of a sitting interior minister, he said the lack of a minister complicates matters because some authorities require ministerial approval.