PNN – A Zionist media outlet has reported that the costs of Israel’s wars far exceed the figures announced to date.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network; the economic section of the news and analysis site Walla—citing a senior Israeli economist—revealed that the costs imposed on the Israeli economy by the mobilization of IDF reservists have reached over 68,000 shekels per soldier.
Part of the report states: How much does a reservist’s one-month absence from work cost the Israeli economy? According to new data released by Shmuel Abramson, the Finance Ministry’s chief economist, this cost is significantly higher than initial estimates made at the start of the war.
The expert emphasized that the economic cost of one month of reserve duty for a non-Haredi Jewish man aged 31 to 39 is estimated at approximately 68,000 shekels, whereas the figure in the March 2024 estimate was around 54,000 shekels.
For the 22–30 age group, this cost has also risen from 33,000 shekels to approximately 39,000 shekels per month.
The report identifies the failure to account for a key parameter as the primary reason for this significant gap between the two estimates.
According to the chief economist, it has been found that reservists absent from work earn substantially higher incomes than their counterparts who were not called up for service.
Their average monthly income is approximately 18,800 shekels, whereas the figure for those with no absences is around 13,300 shekels—a 42% difference amounting to roughly 5,500 shekels per month. In an earlier estimate, the Ministry of Finance had assumed that these individuals earned salaries comparable to those of their counterparts, leading to an underestimation of the cost to the economy.