Jerusalem Mayor, Moshe Lion, has a mission to make Jerusalem a hi-tech center of Israel. He’s backing it up with 1.1 million square meters of office space, approved for development in dedicated areas throughout the ancient city. Yet the reality is, that only 7% of employment in Israel takes hold in Jerusalem, and many startups and tech companies favor working in Tel Aviv or Haifa areas, and this might be due simply to lack of sufficient space.
There are advantages to starting up in Jerusalem offices, like a 50% municipal tax cut, as well as the hubs of entrepreneurs and startups that are pioneering startup success from within the city, like Mobileye. With more business comes more jobs, and currently, only 340,000 of the 936,000 people in Jerusalem are employed. Of these, only 75% live in the city.
Noam Cohen, who ran the Geocartagraphia Economics report, suggests that “Aggressive involvement of the Municipality, the Jerusalem Development Authority, and academic organizations in partnership with entrepreneurs, would be a decisive influence for successfully occupying the planned areas in the city in all the employment zones, which could bring the city forward as a major factor in Israel’s employment market.”
