The average monthly salary has reached an unprecedented high of more than 10,000 shekels ($2,500) per month, according to a report published by the Central Bureau of Statistics. The report said that in June, the average salary jumped 7.9%, or NIS 735 ($187), to reach NIS 10,078 ($2,562). This was the largest monthly increase seen for a long time. The number of employees in Israel has also increased, rising 2.5% in the first quarter of 2015 as 82,000 people joined the workforce, bringing the total number of workers to 3.41 million. Several fields of employment in Israel are known for paying particularly high salaries. The gas and oil exploration sector, run by Nobel Energy and Yitzhak Tshuva's companies, pays an average salary of NIS 23,598 ($5,998) a month. The next best-paid sector is banking, where employees earn an average of NIS 20,704 ($5,265) a month. Senior officials in government-owned companies take home monthly salaries of NIS 18,691 ($4,751), while the Israel Electric Corporation and the Mekorot Israel National Water Company pay an average of NIS 18,395 ($4,676) a month. These figures would appear to contradict the trend toward a recession that has recently received considerable coverage. However, despite the encouraging numbers and high salaries in some fields, 66% of employees in Israel earn less than the average salary, and 50% of employees, some 1.7 million people, earn less than NIS 6,500 ($1,652) a month. Government clerks and managers of public services take home barely NIS 5,120 ($1,302) per month, 29% of the monthly salary of senior public officials. Actors, singers and other entertainers make do with monthly salaries of NIS 6,097 ($1,550), and workers in the agricultural sectors make an average of NIS 6,857 ($1,744) per month. Restaurant servers and cafe workers earn an average of NIS 4,206 ($1,070) per month, and workers in the bottom two percentiles earn between NIS 2,000 ($508) and NIS 4,200 ($1,068) a month, less than the minimum wage of NIS 4,650 ($1,182) per month.
