Unemployment has never been higher in Israel as in the past year, amid the coronavirus crisis. Almost 800,000 unemployed people were registered in the second half of January. Most of them are classified at this stage as temporarily unemployed (on unpaid leave). But some have slim chances of of finding work immediately after the economy fully reopens. The Bank of Israel has already warned that due to the coronavirus crisis some 200,000 Israelis may drop out of the labor force altogether. Just when we need to mobilize all available resources to help the jobless, the most acute failures preventin