{"id":3934,"date":"2023-03-08T11:07:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T11:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/?post_type=report&p=3934"},"modified":"2023-08-15T14:32:36","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T14:32:36","slug":"executive-summary","status":"publish","type":"report","link":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/report\/executive-summary\/","title":{"rendered":"Executive Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From many perspectives, Israeli high-tech has never enjoyed a better period. The industry seems to be constantly growing and Israeli startups are attracting increasingly large investments and achieving significant commercial success. High-tech employees continue to be a strong group and benefit from excellent employment conditions compared to their counterparts in other industries. Nevertheless, it is specifically the Covid pandemic and resultant global economic-health-social crisis that has highlighted the challenges faced by the industry which has immense importance for and makes a significant contribution to the Israeli economy. Furthermore, the need to contend with these challenges stresses the need to ensure high-tech\u2019s long-term global success because of the extent to which the Israeli economy depends and is based on this sector. Crises in Israeli high-tech may cause critical damage to employment, state revenue from taxation, pension incomes, and the stability of the Israeli economy at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the “High-Tech During Covid\u201d 2020-2021 Report published by the Innovation Authority (hereinafter: “The Authority\u201d), we present the high-tech industry\u2019s central finance and human resources challenges. The report also examines the industry\u2019s opportunities to contribute to the economic recovery from the Covid crisis by connecting it to the business and public sectors of the economy in order to accelerate digital transformation and the implementation of technological progress in Israel. Covid has highlighted the gaps that exist between high-tech and the rest of the State of Israel with regard to how to contend with crises, a quick transition to working from home, adaptation of the work environment, and utilizing the new business opportunities that have been created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israeli high-tech demonstrated substantial resilience to the Covid crisis thanks to its ability to react quickly to the new work environment and conditions of uncertainty. High-tech indices continued to rise, including the Innovation Authority\u2019s High-Tech Index that presents an aggregated situation report of the Israeli high-tech industry and the changes it has undergone. For more details on the High-Tech Index, see Appendix.<\/a> This contrasts with the other sectors of the economy in which the economic shockwaves had a more severe impact. At the same time, the demand for employees in technology professions remained high throughout the crisis \u2013 even though the shortage in employees declined from 19,000 to 13,000 available high-tech jobs, as can be seen in the Human Capital Report published by the Authority. The ratio of unemployment benefits recipients in high-tech reached a record level during the Covid period of almost 14% during the first lockdown. This is 7 times higher than the parallel ratio prior to the Covid crisis which stood at only 2% as of January 2020. In the other sectors of the economy, the ratio of unemployment benefits recipients during the first lockdown was however double. The rate of unemployment in high-tech also rose during subsequent lockdowns although the gap compared to the economy in general narrowed. With the economy\u2019s return to normal activity, the rate of unemployment in high-tech as of April 2021, stands at 8.2% – still 4 times higher than that prior to the crisis. Nonetheless, given the rise in the number of total employees in the high-tech industry, concern exists that these unemployed high-tech professionals are not expected to find employment in the near future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most high-tech employees who lost their jobs during the Covid crisis earned relatively low salaries compared to the industry i.e., less than NIS 15,000 a month. As a result, it can be concluded that most of the harm in high-tech employment was to young employees (“juniors\u201d) and auxiliary employees who generally earn less than the average high-tech salary that, in 2020, stood at NIS 25,300. Experienced employees in core-technology high-tech professions were impacted less than the generally severe economic effect of the crisis and its influence on the general economy. The primary characteristic of the current period for Israeli high-tech is the industry\u2019s maturation. More Israeli startups than before are choosing to preserve their independence and to grow as complete companies with large numbers of employees, leading significant business activity worldwide. The capital raised by Israeli startups more than quadrupled within a decade and stood at USD 11.5 billion in 2020, 20% more than the total raised in 2019, while the average funding round for startups rose by 10% in 2020 compared to 2019. Most of the growth in investments is in the sums raised by advanced-stage startups with some unprecedented sums of hundreds of millions of dollars in each investment round. Within just 5 years, the number of investments exceeding USD 100 million has grown almost seven-fold from 3 such investments in 2015 to 20 in 2020. Furthermore, in Q1 2021 alone, 20 investments exceeding USD 100 million were finalized.1<\/a><\/sup>Innovation Authority adaptation of IVC data, The Israeli Tech Review Q1 2021<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The leading fields in Israeli startups investments are cyber and FinTech which attracted the largest amount of capital in 2020. Against the backdrop of the Covid crisis, the sector with the next highest number of funding rounds after the cyber sector was that of startups in the field of digital health \u2013 a field characterized by growing global demand. Furthermore, companies using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies raised more than USD 4 billion in 2020. High-tech exports also rose consistently and reached almost USD 50 billion in 2020 \u2013 more than 40% of total Israeli exports. The number of stock offerings by Israeli startups that are growing and maintaining their independence, reached a record of 31 IPOs in 2020, primarily on the Tel Aviv and Wall Street stock exchanges. Compared to 2019, the number of stock offerings by Israeli technology companies in 2020 rose by more than 50%. The Israeli companies are utilizing the opening of the global stock offerings window and several other Israeli companies are preparing to raise capital on the stock exchange, an indication that, considering the 23 stock offerings held during the first quarter of 2021, this trend is set to continue in the foreseeable future.2<\/a><\/sup>Innovation Authority adaptation of Startup Nation Central data. <\/span>At the same time, since the record levels of 2015, there has been a consistent decline in the number of new development centers opened by multinational companies that generally locate their activity in Israel following acquisition of or merger with a local startup. In 2020, only 4 new centers were opened. As for mergers and acquisitions, the number of transactions dropped from 148 in 2019 to 109 in 2020.3<\/a><\/sup>Innovation Authority adaptation of IVC data, The Israeli Tech Review Q1 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, it is important to monitor several worrying indices and examine their long-term significance. Following the growth in entrepreneurial activity in Israel a decade ago, recent years have seen a significant decline in this important metric which checks the number of new startups established each year. This decline raises the question as to whether Israel is at the end of the startup nation era. Within five years, the number of new startups established in Israel has plummeted from 1,400 in 2014 to approximately 850 new companies in 2019, and about 520 in 2020.4<\/a><\/sup>This estimate will be updated and is expected to increase in the near future. However the decline trend will probably continue and is expected to be lower than that of 2019.<\/span> The number of new startups established in the last two years is similar to the levels recorded in Israel a decade ago, this despite the subsequent growth and development of the local innovation ecosystem. The number of new startups established each year will have an influence on Israeli high-tech in the future and the question arises as to the minimum number of companies needed to preserve Israel as a startup nation. As of now, the number of seed investments \u2013 investments directed at new startups \u2013 has not declined further, while there has been a significant increase in investments attracted by growing startups at more advanced financing stages. The number of investors participating in investment rounds of early-stage startups has declined over the previous two years, especially in seed stages. The first chapter<\/a> of the report \u2013 “Is this the end of the Israeli \u2018Startup Nation\u2019 era?\u201d<\/a> \u2013 addresses the issue of financing and presents extensive details regarding the issues described above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As mentioned, the competition over human resources in high-tech continued throughout the Covid crisis when, despite the rise in unemployment among low salaried high-tech employees, there was a continued shortage of experienced employees sought after by high-tech companies. The large sums raised by Israeli startups are also, to a large degree, intended to increase the companies\u2019 personnel in a range of jobs. High-tech professionals make a significant contribution to the rehabilitation of the economy, which needs to recover from the economic-social-health crisis and to create new sources of income to lower the budget deficit. The employees in the high-tech industry, who earn more than double the overall average salary and who comprise less than 10% of all employees in Israel, are responsible for one quarter of all tax revenues from salaried employees. The employees in multinational companies\u2019 development centers are responsible for tax payments more than six times higher than their relative share of the Israeli labor market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This report also discusses in detail several other long-term trends related to high-tech human resources. The first is the increase in age of high-tech employees which reflects the industry\u2019s maturation. In contrast to high-tech\u2019s image as a young industry, in recent years there has been an increase in the employees\u2019 average age that is now even slightly higher than the average for the whole economy. The average age of high-tech employees in 2019 stood at 40.1 compared to the average employee age of 39.6 in the overall economy. A second trend is the rise in the rate that university graduates are entering the industry, a trend that should lower the shortage of high-tech employees. The most popular course of study in Israel during the current academic year is a bachelor\u2019s degree in engineering studied by more than 18% of all Israeli students. In total, one of every three students in Israel is studying for a bachelor\u2019s degree in STEM subjects (science and high-tech), 64% of whom (55,000 students) at Israeli universities. One in every four students in Israel is therefore studying for a bachelor\u2019s degree in a technology-oriented subject such as engineering or computer science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the one hand, this is excellent news for the high-tech industry that suffers from a chronic shortage of employees. On the other hand, the flow of fresh graduates may exacerbate the existing problem of juniors and makes it difficult for them to find work without prior experience in the field. In the years to come, tens of thousands of new employees with academic technological training will take their place in the high-tech workforce but with only limited, if any, experience. If a third of the students in Israel continue to choose science subjects, more than 20,000 employees with limited experience will join the high-tech industry every year by 2030. To contend with this problem and ensure that the fresh graduates do not remain unemployed, high-tech employers, including mature Israeli startups, will need to develop avenues for hiring and training inexperienced employees. Today, the companies are interested in experienced employees and many of them are unprepared for training young employees. Coupled with this problem, are the high salaries in high-tech that are increasing sharply with the strengthening of the shekel against the dollar. These salaries make Israeli employees expensive and increase companies\u2019 expenditures, compared to solutions such as outsourcing that enable the employment of experienced employees at low costs. With respect to the makeup of the industry\u2019s employees, Israeli high-tech continues to preserve its status as a homogeneous and relatively closed circle based primarily on non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who comprise two thirds of all high-tech employees. The ratio of ultra-Orthodox and Arab employees in the high-tech industry remains low at 3% and 2%, respectively. With respect to women, it is noteworthy that although the number of women students choosing to study computer science has risen by approximately 130% since 2010, and those choosing to study engineering has increased by 50%, they still comprise only a third of all science degree students, similar to their share of the high-tech workforce. As a result, the ratio of women in technology jobs in the high-tech industry is also expected to remain steady at about one third in coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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