Head of employment service: AI bringing increased unemployment in hi-tech sector - The Jerusalem Post

Oh, marvellous. The hi-tech sector, the supposed engine of the future, is now busily engineering its own unemployment figures. Inbal Mashash, director general of the Israel Employment Service, has announced that AI is driving a surge in joblessness, with over 16,000 hi-tech workers recently registering as unemployed. It's almost poetic: the industry that promised to automate everyone else is now automating itself at a brisk clip. The irony would be delicious if it weren't happening to actual people with actual mortgages in Tel Aviv. One almost expects the next start-up pitch to be about an AI that helps you file for unemployment faster.

This isn't an isolated data point, of course — it's a pattern. But what makes Israel's case particularly grim is the concentration. These are hi-tech workers, the top of the pyramid, the people who were supposed to be immune to the robot takeover. Turns out nobody is immune, not even the ones building the robots. Mashash's announcement is less a warning than an epitaph for the "learn to code" generation, and the government's response — probably more of the same retraining platitudes — will likely be about as useful as a rubber crutch.

And what do the usual suspects offer in response? Retraining. Upskilling. "New roles in the AI economy." As if the marketplace for middle-aged ex-Netanya engineers who built banking software is about to boom. The 16,000 figure is likely a floor, not a ceiling — the early registrants who bothered to sign up. The real number, broken out from the coffee shops of Herzliya, is probably higher. Meanwhile, the tech CEOs who did the automating are probably writing think pieces about "creative destruction" while sipping oat lattes in Shuk HaCarmel. Pass the gin — and maybe a CV.