Between 1985 and 1995, the government of Israel and many voluntary organizations, among them JDC-Israel and the Jewish Agency for Israel, invested significant resources in promoting the employment of Ethiopian immigrants. Vocational training courses suited to the background of the Ethiopian immigrants were developed, as were group job placement services involving a national network of employment coordinators and Ethiopian mediators, who supervised the Ethiopians in their place of employment. Attention to this issue by the relevant organizations has since declined. In effect, hardly any new models of integration into employment have been developed in recent years. Recently, policymakers and providers of services to the Ethiopian community have again become aware of the urgency of promoting their integration into employment, for several reasons:
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A need to foster the economic independence of Ethiopian families, and avoid their dependence on the public support system.
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A desire to prevent a climate of legitimacy in the Ethiopian community for not working and living off benefits.
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A desire to improve the welfare and standard of living of Ethiopian families, and enable them to meet their children’s material and scholastic needs.
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The realization that a situation in which parents do not support their family has a negative impact on both the family’s status, in general, and on the parents’ capacity to serve as role models for their children, in particular.
Until recently, we had only limited data on this issue, most of it on the employment rate of the total Ethiopian immigrant population, and on employment rates by gender, age, and length of time in Israel (e.g., data from the Central Bureau of Statistics’ 1995 population census; analysis of data on Ethiopian immigrants, taken from the Central Bureau of Statistics’ 1999 manpower survey, conducted by the Adva Center (see Information about Equality, issue 11, 2002).
We also had very little data, on parents of a national sample of adolescents, from a study conducted by Lifshitz et al. (1998). A survey conducted by Dialog-Data Corporation (2001) provided some information about the involvement of Ethiopian immigrants in entrepreneurial ventures. During the past two years, a series of surveys was conducted of all Ethiopian immigrant households in neighborhoods with a large concentration of Ethiopian immigrants, and in which the Ministry of Absorption and local authority had established a neighborhood center for the immigrants (King and Efrati 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2003; King, Efrati and Rivlis-Eitan, 2003; King, Efrati and Pinchasi, 2003).
Through these surveys, information was received on the nature of the jobs held by Ethiopian immigrants, their participation in vocational training programs, the reasons why those who lacked employment were still non-employed, barriers to employment which the immigrants encountered at different stages, and the areas in which the immigrants need assistance. However, this information was also fragmentary, as employment was only one of the issues covered by the survey. Consequently, a need remained for more information that would provide an understanding of these immigrants’ unique difficulties.
This study was conducted with the funding of Partnership Haifa-Boston, the Department for Israel of the Jewish Agency for Israel, JDC-Israel, and the JDC-Brookdale Institute.