The math behind this crisis is simple. With an average monthly salary of NIS 30,000 and an average dollar exchange rate of NIS 3.53 over the past decade, each high-tech employee costs an exporting company roughly $8,500 per month. At an exchange rate of NIS 3 to the dollar, that same employee costs approximately $10,000 per month, an increase of $1,500.
Based on these figures, Ronen Nir, a managing director at VC firm PSG, calculated that for an industry employing roughly 400,000 workers, the stronger shekel adds about NIS 21 billion in annual labor costs. That amount is equivalent to the cost of employing roughly 40,000 workers, or, more accurately, the number of jobs that could be at risk of being relocated abroad in pursuit of lower costs.
2 View gallery
Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk (from left), Microsoft Israel R&D Center Managing Director; Arik Kleinstein, co-founder of Glilot…
