Israel's unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest in nearly 50 years, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported this week.
On Wednesday, the bureau released figures for January, showing unemployment at 3.7%, compared to 4% the previous month, December 2017.
The unemployment rate in January was also lower than the annual average in 2017, which stood at 4.2%.
The last time unemployment was this low was in the early 1970s, before the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when it was 3.4%.
The CBS said that in January, for the first time since the 1970s, the number of people classified as unemployed dropped below 150,000, to 148,000.
Israel's labor force participation rate stands at 3.86 million and for the first time includes more women than men: 1.82 million men compared to 1.840 million women.
The rate of employment for people aged 25 to 64 was 80% (68% for women and 87% for men). Unemployment levels for men in that age range dropped to 3.5% (compared with 3.8% in December 2017), and for women in that age group fell to 3.9% (compared with 4.2% in December 2017).
Meanwhile, Israeli goods exports increased by 6% over the past year, with high-tech exports growing by 7.5%.
Credit card purchases between November 2017 and January 2018 increased by 5.3% compared to the equivalent period the previous year.
Economy and Industry Minister Eli Cohen lauded the figures on Wednesday, saying they underscore the Israeli government's successful economic stewardship and its praiseworthy efforts to boost Israel's peripheral communities.
"The CBS figures are proof that we are pursuing correct, responsible and wise economic policies," he said.
"We will continue working on creating more quality jobs and on boosting productivity so that we can encourage the economy to grow.
"Over the past several years, my ministry has put a lot of effort into building new factories, mostly in remote communities, to create more quality jobs and to boost productivity, all the while maintaining low unemployment."
