Israel’s population reaches 7.6 million

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah 5771, the population of Israel surpassed 7,645,500, of which 5,770,900 people are Jews, 1,559,100 are Arabs, and another 315,500 labeled “other,” according to numbers published by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Monday.

This data does not include the migrant workers in Israel, who number approximately 220,000.

The statistics also reveal that the growth rate of the population of Israel in the last 7 years equals approximately 1.8 percent per year (since 2003). Israel experienced a similar growth rate in the 1980s, which were years with low levels of immigration.

During the 1990s, when there were record high immigration levels from the former Soviet Union, the country’s growth rate of 3 percent per year, on average.

In 2009, the annual growth rate among Jews was 1.7 percent, among Arabs it was 2.4 percent, and among the “others” it was 0.8 percent. The growth rate for Muslims was 2.8 percent, for Christians 1 percent, and for Druze 1.7 percent.

14,572 immigrants arrived in Israel in 2009, 6 percent more than in 2008. The countries from which the most immigrant arrived were Russia (3,245), the U.S.A. (2,474), the Ukraine (1,602), France (1,558) and the U.K. (708).

In 2009, Israel immigration continued to be overwhelmingly female. For every 1,000 women that immigrated to Israel, only 892 men made aliyah.

The Israeli population is considered to be relatively young in comparison to the Arab states. In 2009, 28 percent of Israelis were under age 15, in comparison to 17 percent on average in other Western countries. The percentage of Israelis over the age of 64 was close to 10 percent, compared to 15 percent in other Western states.

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