Knesset document: a ₪5,800 monthly wage gap — 43.6% — between Ethiopian-Israeli employees and other Jewish employees in the same industries

The document

"Data on Ethiopian-Israelis and a review of housing assistance programmes" — an economic review by the Knesset Research and Information Center, dated August 10, 2025. Written by Bat Chen Rotenberg, economist. Approved by Ami Tzadik, head of the budgetary oversight department. The document was written at the request of MK Eli Dallal ahead of a lobby event.

The employment and wages chapter is based on processing of CBS data for 2021. That is the date of the data, and it should be read together with the finding.

The central finding

> "In 2021 the average wage of Ethiopian-Israeli salaried employees across all industries was ₪5,800 lower than the average wage of other Jewish employees in those same industries, a gap of 43.6%."

Source: Knesset Research and Information Center, 10.8.2025 (PDF) · verified September 2026.

Note the phrasing: "in those same industries." This is not a gap produced by comparing a waiter with a programmer. It is a comparison within the same economic industry.

The double picture

The conclusion the document itself sets out at the end:

> "The data presented above indicate that the employment rate of Ethiopian-Israelis is high relative to their share of the working-age population, and that their average wage is relatively low."

In detail:

• In 2021 the number of salaried jobs held by Ethiopian-Israelis was about 72,000.
• Their weight in all Jewish salaried jobs: 3.4% — higher than the Ethiopian-Israeli share of Jews aged 18–64, which is 2.8%.

In other words: people are working. The participation rate is not the problem. The wage is.

Where those workers sit

The document finds a negative correlation between the average wage in an industry and the weight of Ethiopian-Israeli salaried jobs in it — the better an industry pays, the fewer of them are in it.

The biggest gap sits where the pay is best

This is the important line in the document, and it runs against intuition:

> "In the industries where the average wage is highest, the wage gaps (in nominal terms and in percentages) between Ethiopian-Israelis and other Jews are the largest — information and communications, electricity supply, financial services, professional services, manufacturing and mining, and real-estate activity; in the industries where the average wage is lowest, the wage gaps are the smallest — food services and other services."

In other words: getting into a well-paying industry is not the end of the story. In the industries with the highest pay, the within-industry gap is the widest. That points at what happens after entry — the role, the seniority, the promotion track — and not only at who gets hired.

It is also why success measures that count only entries are not enough. The government programme's report also measures the actual wage increase of programme graduates, which is the sounder measure.

Caveats the document itself records — and they should be read

In the footnotes:

• The data refer to the number of jobs, not the number of employed people. Some jobs are part-time, and one person may hold more than one.
• Therefore comparing employment representation figures with population representation figures (which are calculated in terms of people) "is not entirely accurate and is presented in order to obtain an estimate."
• The data cover only bodies employing five or more employees.

We did not quote the document in order to establish that the gap is exactly 43.6% in every cut. We quoted it because it is the most recent official estimate we found, and it was written for the Knesset.

What this means for a reader

If you are at the start of a working life, two practical conclusions follow from these figures:

1. The industry you choose matters — 74% of the jobs sit in industries paying below the average.
2. Within the industry, the role matters no less — the largest gap is precisely in the strongest industries.

For training, mentoring and placement programmes that work on exactly these two points — our careers centre.

Sources

• Data on Ethiopian-Israelis and a review of housing assistance programmes — Knesset Research and Information Center, 10.8.2025 (PDF) — read in full 8.9.2026
• The CBS education and schooling data — our article
• Careers centre — Tedros