Among companies already using AI, the most common application by far is administrative and business processes—including strategic planning and recruitment—cited by about 63 percent of AI-using firms.

By Pesach Benson, TPS

Israeli businesses are rapidly increasing their use of artificial intelligence, with nearly four in ten companies expecting to adopt the technology within six months, up from roughly one in four a year earlier.

The figures, released by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Thursday, suggest Israel is among the world’s quicker adopters of workplace AI, as governments and businesses continue grappling with how to measure and regulate the technology’s spread.

One of the most notable developments was the sharp rise in adoption across traditional manufacturing industries.

Companies in manufacturing, electricity, and water supply—sectors not typically viewed as early technology adopters—recorded significant increases in AI use between June 2025 and March 2026.

Usage for administrative and business processes rose from about 14 percent to 52 percent, while marketing and sales applications climbed from roughly 16 percent to 57 percent.

Among companies already using AI, the most common application is administrative and business processes, including planning and recruitment, cited by about 63 percent of AI-using firms.

In service-sector companies outside the high-tech industry, that figure rises to 69 percent.

Marketing and sales ranks second, used by roughly 46 percent of AI-adopting businesses, while around 35 percent report using AI for product development or direct customer service, and a similar share for research and innovation.

The high-tech and financial sectors remain well ahead of the broader economy. About 73 percent of firms in these industries use AI for research and development, compared to 35 percent across all industries.

Half also report using AI for product manufacturing or service delivery to customers.

A panel analysis tracking more than 800 businesses across both survey periods found that companies using AI for longer were more likely to report significant gains in worker productivity.

At the same time, more mature AI users were also more likely to report reductions in employment levels, suggesting that deeper integration of the technology may be associated with workforce changes as well as efficiency gains.

On barriers to adoption, about 76 percent of businesses not currently using AI said the technology was not relevant to their economic activity, a figure largely unchanged from June 2025.

However, the share citing a lack of knowledge about AI capabilities nearly doubled, rising from around 8 percent to 16 percent, suggesting that limited understanding of the technology is becoming a more significant obstacle to adoption as it becomes more widespread.

In the high-tech and financial sectors, the share of non-adopters who viewed AI as irrelevant to their business fell sharply, from 78 percent in June 2025 to 39 percent in March 2026, suggesting that even firms that have not yet implemented AI increasingly see the technology as relevant to their future operations.

The findings were based on a survey of businesses with ten or more employees — some 36,551 companies — conducted in March 2026 as part of Israel’s monthly Business Tendency Survey, which tracks business activity and expectations.

The report builds on earlier findings from June 2025 and is intended to allow international comparison of AI adoption trends across economies.

Israeli businesses are adopting artificial intelligence at a notably faster pace than a year ago, with nearly four in ten companies now anticipating they will use the technology within the next six months—up from roughly one in four in June 2025.

The figures place Israel among the faster-moving economies on AI workplace adoption, at a moment when governments worldwide are still debating how to measure—let alone manage—the technology’s spread.

The Central Bureau of Statistics’ findings come from a survey of businesses with ten or more employees, a population of some 36,551 companies, conducted in March 2026 as part of Israel’s monthly Business Tendency Survey.

The report is a follow-up to an earlier release from April 2026 and is designed in part to allow international comparisons with other economies tracking AI adoption.

Among companies already using AI, the most common application by far is administrative and business processes—including strategic planning and recruitment—cited by about 63 percent of AI-using firms.

In service-sector companies outside the high-tech industry, that figure rises to 69 percent. Marketing and sales came second, used by roughly 46 percent of AI-adopting businesses, while around 35 percent reported using the technology for product development or direct customer service, and a similar share for research and innovation.

The high-tech and financial sectors, unsurprisingly, stand apart. About 73 percent of those firms use AI for research and development—a gap of 38 percentage points above the economy-wide average, wider than the 28-point gap recorded in June 2025, suggesting the sector is pulling further ahead.

Half of high-tech and financial companies also use AI for product manufacturing or service delivery to customers, compared to 35 percent across all industries.

One of the report’s more striking findings concerns Israel’s traditional manufacturing sector. Companies in industry, electricity, and water supply — generally not seen as early technology adopters — showed dramatic increases in AI use across several categories between June 2025 and March 2026.

Usage for administrative and business processes jumped from roughly 14 percent to 52 percent, while marketing and sales applications rose from about 16 percent to 57 percent.

Longer-term users of AI appear to be integrating it more deeply. A panel analysis tracking more than 800 businesses across both survey periods found that companies using AI for longer were more likely to report significant gains in worker productivity.

However, the same experienced users were also more likely to report negative effects on employment levels—suggesting that as AI matures within a business, it begins to displace roles rather than simply augment them.

On barriers to adoption, about 76 percent of businesses not currently using AI said the technology was simply not relevant to their economic activity, a figure nearly unchanged from June 2025.

However, the share citing a lack of knowledge about AI capabilities nearly doubled, rising from around 8 percent to 16 percent—a signal that awareness, not just perceived relevance, is becoming a meaningful obstacle as the technology becomes more visible.

In the high-tech and financial sectors, the proportion of non-adopters who said AI was irrelevant to their business fell sharply, from 78 percent in June 2025 to just 39 percent in March 2026, pointing to a significant shift in how even hesitant firms in those industries now perceive the technology’s potential.

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For many of the local workforce, the global pandemic served as a chance to reevaluate lives and careers, so who are the Israelis who chose to quit their jobs in a time of crisis?

By Maayan Manela, CTech

Hila Levy, a software engineer at Safebrich, worked for a high-tech company in the southern city of Beer Sheva for seven years, and then, at the height of the Covid-19 crisis, she stepped away.

“I felt the Corona allowed me to work in the field I wanted. The option of hybrid work made the decision easier,” she said. She worked in the communications sector and wanted to move to cyber. After returning from maternity leave, she announced her resignation and moved to a new position in the center of the country. In the south of Israel, there is a lower supply of jobs; but thanks to Covid and remote work, new options that did not exist for her before, opened up.

“I really wanted to work in cyber. From my research, I saw that this was the opportunity to make the change, and I also felt it was time for me to move on from my previous job. Maybe these were postpartum hormones but I really felt now was my time,” she said.

And Hila is not alone. Millions of people around the world are leaving their jobs.

In the U.S., the number of voluntary redundancies peaked at nearly four million in April, while in June 3.9 million Americans quit. A March Microsoft survey showed that 41 percent of workers were looking for a new job, and in more recent surveys the number of people thinking of leaving their jobs reached 95%.

And according to the job search website Monster.com, over 90% of employees are even willing to move to another industry to find the right job for them.

Riding the COVID train for a job upgrade

“This crisis, and initially also the unpaid leave installments many received, has allowed people to move to more stable, better companies, to leave organizations in favor of more senior positions, or to make professional changes,” says Liat Ben Tora-Shushan, career management department director at AllJobs, which accompanies between 400 and 600 people making these moves every month.

“We live in an age where people change roles every two to three years and understand that the main way to upgrade is to move to another organization. A lot of people jumped on the Corona train for an employment upgrade,” she said.

The phenomenon of mass resignation occurs as recruitment becomes more challenging for employers in all industries. At a time when the vacancy rate is high, so is the unemployment rate and the economy is in a crisis. In June, the vacancy rate peaked at 3.2% and the unemployment rate was 6.9%.

“Employers report that they have never had such a hard time recruiting staff,” Ben Tora-Shushan said.

“It is a combination of mass layoffs that were at the beginning of the pandemic when organizations suffered economic hardship and tried to be more efficient, as well as organizations that are growing now understanding Covid is part of our lives and are in need of a growing workforce,” she noted.

“Furthermore, as part of the changes the labor world has felt recently, a lot of people have moved out of their organizations, leaving quite a few positions that — if in the past were difficult to recruit for — today it is almost impossible. Positions, where it was always difficult to hire for such as sales and R&D, are joined by jobs in shops and restaurants, said ,” Ben Tora-Shushan added.

The phenomenon is called “The Great Resignation,” a term coined by Professor Anthony Klotz of the University of Texas. He argued that voluntary mass departure would be one of the main consequences of the Corona crisis on the labor market as during over a year-and-a-half of a global pandemic, people had time to reflect on their careers and think, among other things, about work-life balance.

Maayan Inbar, a growth marketing analyst at Kape, did not consider leaving her job before the Corona crisis. At the end of April, she resigned and moved to a new job after a five-month process.

“I learned a lot about the field of online marketing and that’s what motivated me to look for another company. During Covid there was more time to have a thought process, think where I want to go, ask questions,” Inbar said.

“Also practically, I had more time to read about jobs, send resumes, be interviewed, and do home tests. For most positions, there are multi-stage processes and during Covid the afternoon and also the weekends are freer,” she added. It’s not that Inbar did not like her previous job, but when she realized that it was possible to work from home and that she could get a role she wanted and did not exist in her previous company, she decided to make the move.

Who leaves during a crisis

Levy and Inbar left their jobs to improve their situation, to have a better position, which better matched their desires. They are both working in the high-tech industry where there is a large supply of jobs and opportunities to work remotely. However, those resigning during the pandemic were not only a part of an educated, highly demanded workforce from industries with many opportunities. The unpaid leave model, which provided an economic safety net since unemployment benefits were guaranteed until the end of June 2021, allowed people to undergo processes of a career change and career upgrade.

Service-providing sectors, where wages are low and labor is hard, suffered severe damage during closures and restrictions, with workers resigning and employers finding it very difficult to recruit. More than 740,000 of the four million workers who resigned in the U.S. during April were in the leisure sector, according to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics.

In Israel, many shops and restaurants were forced to close and lay off their staff during the three lockdowns the country endured. The uncertainty for those workers was particularly high as their return to work was challenging. Client-facing positions during a manpower shortage meant that every worker had to work harder, which caused many young workers to simply leave and not rush back.

But why is everyone leaving

While the wave of resignations peaked during the Corona crisis, it is not a new phenomenon in the labor market. Researchers in the U.S., Europe and Israel identified the trend as early as 2014.

“The corona, because it is a significant personal, economic and social crisis, has sharpened all kinds of existing trends,” says Dr. Oleg Komlik, head of the Management and Human Resources Track at the College of Management’s School of Behavioral Sciences.

“At crisis points, people recalculate their course, including in the employment context. Economic, sociological, and psychological aspects came into the process as well. As people sat alone at home and thought about their abandoned dreams, the new labor market suddenly opened new opportunities that were considered irregular,” he noted.

“For example, if I always dreamt about opening a business but did not know I could work from home, so today I know. People started to rethink their lives and work was definitely in focus,” Komlik said. “Work is not just money, it is also the question of whether I am realizing my potential, and in Israel and other western countries, economic support networks have been provided. When there is such a net, it is easier to resign and think about what to do with your dreams and aspirations.”

The Gallup Research Institute, on the other hand, argues that the large wave of leaving is generally related to a sense of involvement, or rather the lack of involvement of employees in the workplace.

In a survey conducted in March this year, Gallup found that 48% of Americans are looking for another job, regardless of the industry in which they are employed or wage levels. Most workers in the world, they found, do not feel engaged at work when in fact only 30% of them feel involved in the work.

In Israel, as of 2021, only 18% of employees report a sense of involvement at work, an increase of 2% compared to previous years. This means that 82% of Israelis do not like their job.

“We are seeing a decrease in commitment to jobs and an increase in burnout. Expectations have also changed. If in the past, people were just looking to make a living, younger generations are in search of interest, challenge, and growth but when the reality is that they end up burned out from work then you see more resignations, less commitment, and when a huge crisis hit – people rethought their track,” said Komlik.

Part of the downward trend in employee involvement and commitment has to do with the past year-and-a-half that has been characterized by uncertainty and stress. In addition, remote work has turned the sense of involvement into something that needs to be actively maintained and not all employers have been able to do so. When there is no physical office it is more challenging to preserve an organizational culture and a sense of belonging.

The unpaid leave model, on the one hand, gave workers financial security, the opportunity to think and reflect on their career, improve skills, and even the courage to step away, but on the other hand, it created a crisis of confidence between workers and employers.

Komlik described the move to quit under these circumstances, “when there is an economic safety net, people make a rational and very understandable decision to resign,” and he now expects that with the model cancelation, we will see more people return to the labor market, although not necessarily to the places where they worked before the crisis.

This great wave of resignations during Covid is part of a trend that has begun in the last decade and may be simply part of the transition process of the future world of labor. A process that has accelerated as a result of the coronavirus and is also related to the acceleration of digitization, remote work, and changes in the skills and abilities required of employees. It is a process that has been talked about for years and, like many processes, is taking place at a rapid pace against the backdrop of the global epidemic.

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As women increasingly participate in the workforce, new research finds that their absence on the first day of school is palpably felt in the stock market.

By TPS

As any kindergartner or first-grader can tell you, the first day of school can be nerve-wracking. To ease the transition, parents often the day off to accompany their kids to school.

However, as women increasingly participate in the workforce, new research finds that their absence on the first day of school is palpably felt in the stock market. Their absence shows up in lower trading volumes when compared with market activity on other school days.

Further, in countries with gender nondiscrimination laws governing hiring, the decrease in market activity on the first day of school was more pronounced than those with more traditional societies.

These findings, published in the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, was conducted by Zvi Wiener, former Dean of the Business School and a Professor of Banking and Risk Management at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU), along with colleagues Menachem Abudy and Yevgeny Mugerman at Bar Ilan University and at Bar Ilan and HU, respectively.

The team surveyed 607 participants from 32 countries regarding their gender, education level, parental status and whether they accompanied their child on the first day of school. They then pulled figures from the World Bank regarding female labor force participation in each of those 32 countries, as well as their trading volumes on their first day of school, which often coincides with the beginning of the trading week. They then compared these figures with similar data points from 1968-2017.

“By isolating and cross-referencing these data points we were able to see the effect of working women on trading volumes by paying close attention to what happens to market activity when those women are absent,” Wiener explained.

The researchers found that in 2018, there was no gender difference in terms of who accompanies their child on the first day of kindergarten or 1st grade—two-thirds of both male and female respondents (67%) said they take off time from work to accompany their child, rather than outsource this activity to others.

“Our survey supports our assumption that both parents consider the first day of school an important event of their nuclear family,” Wiener shared.

However, since many mothers now work outside the home, their absence is felt more deeply than it was in 1968 when fewer mothers did so. In fact, 72% of the countries surveyed reported a lower trading volume on the first day of school, with an average decrease of 12% in market activity. The lower trading volumes were seen even when the first day of school coincided with Mondays, traditionally a slow trading day.

“Back in the 1960s and 1970s, there were fewer working mothers so their impact on volume trading on any given day was less pronounced. However, as women expand their place in the job market, their impact on the larger economy is significant,” shared Wiener.

The motivation for this study was rooted in the growing interest in the association between social considerations and stock markets, the authors explained.

“By focusing on the first day of school, we were able to pinpoint that the decrease in trading volume is related to the level of female workforce participation,” Wiener explained.

“The fact that trading volumes were negatively affected, particularly in countries with legislated gender non-discrimination laws that govern hiring practices, actually shows the extent to which gender equality has been largely successful in those societies,” Wiener added.

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