The government needs to take immediate action to implement its decision to bring another 15,000 foreign workers to the construction industry, Eldad Nitzan, chairman of the Foreign Workers’ Manpower Corporations in the Construction Industry at the Chamber of Commerce, said.
“Unfortunately, if you do not take immediate action by the government to bring another 15,000 foreign workers into the construction industry as decided and increase the quota of foreign workers in the industry by 90%, in 2022 housing prices will rise at a rate similar to 2021,” Nitzan wrote to the Housing, Finance and Interior ministries this week.
The shortage of foreign workers in “wet jobs” (which include formwork, ironwork, floors and plastering) in the construction industry has been a major factor in the rise in housing prices, Nitzan said. It’s creating a delay in the delivery of apartments and the inability to meet the 2022 national plan to start the construction of about 80,000 new housing units.
Some 16,500 foreign workers are currently employed in Israel’s construction industry. If about 30,000 foreign workers were to be employed in the industry, an approximate 3% fall in apartment prices would be expected in 2022 in the Tel Aviv and Gush Dan areas, and about 6% in the periphery, he said.