The Bank of Israel's Composite State of the Economy Index for April increased by 0.25 percent, in view of the cancellation in recent months of most restrictions for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting expansion of economic activity (Table 1). These changes were made possible due to progress in the vaccination campaign that began in Israel in December 2020 and has succeeded in greatly lowering morbidity and infection. As a reflection of the continued broad reopening of businesses (other than the incoming tourism industry), the job vacancy rate jumped in April to a record high for this indicator for the second consecutive month.[1]
Beyond the job vacancy rate, the Composite Index for April was positively affected by increases in almost all components: the import of consumer goods (April), goods exports (April), the Industrial Production index (March), the services revenue index (March), the retail trade revenue index (March), employee posts (February), and services exports (February). In contrast, the import of manufacturing inputs (April) declined, which had a negative impact on the index. Table 2 presents the development of components of the Index in the past few months.
In view of the uniqueness of the crisis and the resulting measurement difficulties, the changes in the Index should not be used as an indicator of the precise intensity of changes in economic activity, and particularly not regarding the relative intensity between various months.
Table 1: Revisions in the Composite Index
|
Revision |
Previous figure |
New figure |
|
April |
|
0.25 |
|
March |
0.50 |
0.37 |
|
February |
0.45 |
0.44 |
|
January 2021 |
-0.34 |
-0.35 |
|
December 2020 |
0.67 |
0.61 |
|
November |
0.81 |
0.86 |
Table 2: Changes in the Index components in recent months♦
(monthly percent change, unless otherwise noted)
|
|
April 2021 |
March 2021 |
February 2021 |
January 2021 |
|
Industrial Production Index (excluding mining and quarrying) |
|
2.1 |
-1.1 |
-1.2 |
|
Services Revenue Index (excluding education and public administration) |
|
3.4 |
1.5 |
1.9 |
|
Retail Trade Revenue Index |
|
1.2 |
6.1 |
-5.8 |
|
Imports of consumer goods1 |
2.5 |
7.2 |
0.5 |
-4.3 |
|
Imports of manufacturing inputs (excluding fuels)1 |
-1.6 |
2.5 |
-1.1 |
4.1 |
|
Goods exports (excluding agriculture)1 |
3.3 |
0.6 |
0.0 |
-1.3 |
|
Services exports (excluding transportation)2 |
|
|
0.9 |
7.6 |
|
Number of employee posts in the private sector |
|
|
5.3 |
-5.3 |
|
Job vacancy rate in the business sector3 |
4.9 |
4.6 |
2.9 |
2.7 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 Goods imports and exports are calculated in fixed prices (adjusted for changes in foreign trade price indices).
2 Services exports are calculated in real terms using the Consumer Price Index, and are comprised of the export of other business services and the export of tourism services.
3 The job vacancy rate is calculated out of the total number of employed people, and is included in the index at its seasonally adjusted level. The figure for March is not seasonally adjusted, since the Central Bureau of Statistics did not calculate a seasonal adjustment for March due to the exceptional change in the figure.
Detailed explanations regarding how the Composite Index is calculated, as well as detailed long-term tables, can be found at
https://www.boi.org.il/en/Research/Pages/ind.aspx
[1] The job vacancy rate figures for March and April are not seasonally adjusted, since the Central Bureau of Statistics did not calculate a seasonal adjustment for these months due to the exceptional change in this figure.