Israel\u2019s Central Bureau of Statistics reported that in 2024 emigration exceeded immigration by 18,000 people. \u201cThis has not happened since the 1980\u2019s,\u201d Italian-Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio Della Pergola, an emeritus professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a leading expert on the subject, told Pagine Ebraiche. \u201cThe first time emigrants outnumbered immigrants in Israel was in the 1950\u2019s due to the economic crisis that resulted from the big aliyah of that time,\u201d said the scholar. Economic concerns again had a considerable impact in the 1980\u2019s, the second time a negative balance was recorded, \u201cwhen inflation reached 400%.\u201d Now for the third time, economic factors take center stage, tied to the war on multiple fronts.
Della Pergola is not surprised. \u201cThis is not an endemic crisis but one that can be explained by precise events: the October 7 attacks and the war,\u201d he pointed out. \u201cOn the one hand, there is the fear for one\u2019s own safety, beyond the immediate shock. Then we have the economic implications. Let\u2019s not forget that there are people who lost their homes, who have lost their jobs or who have had to file for bankruptcy. Not to mention the issue of the internally displaced.\u201d Nonetheless, the negative data remains relatively low, \u201cwe are not talking about millions of people,\u201d and \u201csome 14,000 among those who left the country did so right after Hamas\u2019 massacres.\u201d In the months that followed, emigration remained relatively stable.
Among the data that struck Della Pergola was the fact that emigration was, \u201cproportionally five times the number,\u201d of those who are classified by the Bureau of Statistics as \u201cother,\u201d meaning, neither Jewish according to Jewish Law (Halakhah) nor members of the Arab community. Among Arabs, on the other hand, emigration was \u201cproportionally one-fifth\u201d of their presence. But one year does not make a statistic. \u201cThe evaluation should be done over several years, between three and five. Only then will we be able to have a definitive idea, or at least a more precise one, on the potential ongoing trends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n