Employees, mostly veterans of military computing units, work at a cyber hotline facility at Israel’s Computer Emergency Response Centre (CERT) in Beersheba, southern Israel February 14, 2019. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen.

CTech – In Israel, tech workers accounted for 8.7 percent of the national workforce in 2018, up from 8.3 percent in 2017, according to a new report published Tuesday by the Israel Innovation Authority, the government’s tech investment arm. According to the report, there were some 300,000 filled full-time tech positions in 2018. By mid-2019, this number increased to 307,000.

Out of the 19,000 local tech job openings in 2018, 14,000 were in software-related roles.

In Israel, tech employees earned nearly 2.5 times the average wage of non-tech employees, according to a report published in 2018 by Israel-based Taub Center for Social Policy Studies, which reviewed data from 2013. In terms of wage inequality, this ratio placed Israel higher than countries like the UK, Germany, and France, and much higher than the OECD average of a 1.64 ratio for that same period.