Why is There a Higher Rate of Self-Employed People in the Minority Sectors Than in the Majority Sector: Study Case in Israel 2011

Abstract

One of the main problems facing governments today is the integration of the minority sectors into the national economy. This study examines this issue in the context of the Arab minority and the Jewish majority in Israel. An important aspect of this problem is the integration of Arabs into the Israeli workforce. The objective of this study is to investigate this problem by dividing the workforce into two sectors – wage-earning employees and the self-employed. The basis for the discussion is that an employee in the job market who, for different reasons, is unable to receive suitable remuneration that is on a par with his or her skill level will turn to the self-employed sector. Within this framework, I compared the way in which the workforce in each sector (Jewish and Arab) was divided between the self-employed sector and the wage-earning employee sector and from this distribution I sought to learn about the integration of Arabs into the Israeli workforce. in 2011 the results of this study show that within the Arab population, the self-employed sector has a relative advantage because of the weakness of the wage-earning employee sector.