Although the economy has been seeing improved growth after the three-year slowdown that began in 1996, Gabbai said unemployment usually lags behind overall economic expansion by six months to a year. The Bank of Israel said earlier this week that the jobless rate would not turnaround until late next year or early 2001.
The unemployment figures could spell embarrassment for Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who vowed to create 300,000 jobs during his election campaign.
In fact, jobs are being created, as rising unemployment was accompanied by continued rapid growth of the civilian work force. The CBS said the labor force grew by 2.3 percent in the third quarter, compared with a year ago, to 2.139 million people — not counting employees from the territories, south Lebanon and legally employed foreign workers.
In addition, the labor force participation rate, which has customarily been low here, grew in the third quarter. The CBS said the percentage of those over 15 in the workforce reached 54.2 percent during the July-September period, up from 53.9 percent a year ago.
The percentage of jobless in the labor force reached a seasonally adjusted 9.1 percent in the July-September period, the CBS reported.
The figure represented the third quarterly rise since the jobless rate fell to 8.2 percent in the second half of 1998. Unemployment was 8.7 percent in the first quarter and 8.9 percent in the second quarter. Unemployment reached a record high of 11.2 percent in 1992 before declining in the following four years.
Joblessness among women continued to lead that of men, but the gap narrowed in the third quarter.
Male unemployment rose 0.3 percentage point to a seasonally adjusted 8.8 percent, while female unemployment rose only 0.1 point to 9.5 percent.