After sometimes traveling hundreds of kilometers, thousands of Indians aged between 21 and 45 queued for hours in the cold outside the recruitment centers set up from January 17 to 21 in Rohtak, Haryana, on the edge of the capital, New Delhi, then from January 21 to 30 in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, in the hope of landing a job in Israel, which has been facing a labor shortage since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
Gurmeet Kashyap, a bricklayer aged just 25, was one of them. On January 1, he answered an advert posted on a Haryana government website for a plasterer's job in Israel. Faced with this tempting offer, the day laborer didn't hesitate. "What can we do? There's no such thing as security when you barely earn enough to buy bread and water. Our security is in God's hands," said Kashyap, who was interviewed for the first round of recruitment at a university in Rohtak. The salaries offered by Israeli recruiters exceed 1,500 euros a month. That's more than 10 times what Kashyap could expect to earn in India – around 100 euros in a good month, he said.
India, which boasts the world's fifth largest economy ahead of the UK, is marked by chronic unemployment. Millions of people are unable to find stable full-time employment. Nearly 22% of Indian employees are casual workers, whose average monthly income doesn't even reach 90 euros. Young people, millions of whom enter the job market every year, suffer particularly from this scourge. According to the employment report from Azim Premji University, Bangalore, unemployment affects 15% of university graduates of all ages and around 42% of graduates under 25. "There are no jobs in India. I applied even though I have no qualifications in construction," said Abhishek, a 24-year-old with a bachelor's degree.
For its part, Israel is cruelly short on workers in the construction sector, which has been virtually at a standstill. Since the start of the war, many foreign workers have fled Israel, which has also withdrawn work permits from over 100,000 Palestinians. "We have lost 82,000 construction workers, most of whom came from Eastern Europe or China and had been living in Israel for years," said Shay Pauzner, deputy director general of the Israel Builders Association, which is currently involved in recruiting 20,000 people in India, under the aegis of New Delhi and Tel Aviv. Before the conflict began in May 2023, the two countries had signed an agreement to allow 40,000 Indians to be employed in the construction and nursing sectors. Some 18,000 Indians are already working in Israel.
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