Report: Sharp rise in Israelis leaving country permanently in 2022-2023 after repeat elections, judicial overhaul

Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) indicates a sharp increase in Israelis leaving the country permanently in 2022 and in the first half of 2023, according to a Channel 13 report that comes after the mass civil unrest last year over the government’s judicial overhaul plan, which followed societal upheavals that caused a string of successive elections in recent years.

According to the report, some 31,000 Israelis were declared as having left the country in 2021, meaning they left a year earlier (compared to 29,000 who returned), 38,000 were declared as such in 2022 (with 23,000 returning), while 55,300 were determined in 2023 to have moved abroad (27,000 returned), marking a jump of over 50 percent.

In unverified data from the first half of 2023, some 40,400 are said to have left the country, according to Channel 13.

The data doesn’t cover the period since Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent, still ongoing war in Gaza accompanied by the conflict with Hezbollah on the northern border.

Israeli journalist Matan Hodorov points out that the spike could partially be due to a change in the definition of emigration, which was previously calculated on at least a one-year absence from the country but is now defined as Israelis who stay aboard for at least 275 days in a one-year period.

דרמה בנתוני ההגירה מישראל:
בשורה התחתונה, נתוני למ״ס מ-2023 מציגים זינוק במס׳ העוזבים את הארץ, לנתון חסר תקדים כ-55,300 איש בשנה.
נתונים ראשונים מ-2024 מנבאים קצב של כ-69,200!
הזינוק נובע בחלקו מתיקון מוצדק (שמיד אסביר) בשיטת המדידה עצמה, אך נותר חריג מאוד גם בנטרול השינוי הזה.???? pic.twitter.com/cTIJJIIY8R

— מתן חודורוב (@MatanHodorov) September 22, 2024

Hodorov also reports that the data indicates more married, educated Israelis are leaving the country.

“This is an initial confirmation of the prevailing feeling among young people from the middle class, that many around us are leaving,” he writes, adding that “if many of those leaving are doctors, researchers, programmers, engineers, etc. – the damage to GDP and tax revenues will be particularly significant. Here, additional data is missing for an accurate situational picture.”

In July, Channel 12 cited CBS data as showing that the number of Israelis who permanently left Israel spiked after Hamas’s October 7 massacre and the ensuing outbreak of war in Gaza but dropped in the following months and had stabilized.