Fewer Israelis Are Giving Up Residency, but the Bigger Departure Story Isn’t Over

The trend of leaving Israel, which has intensified in recent years, is showing signs of slowing down. According to data published today (Tuesday) by the National Insurance Institute, during 2025, 6,651 Israelis filed a voluntary request to end their residency in Israel, down from 7,756 requests recorded in 2024.

Ending residency is a formal process in which a citizen notifies the state that their center of life has moved abroad. The move means losing eligibility for a range of rights and benefits provided through the National Insurance Institute, including allowances, grants, and various services.

A breakdown of the data shows that of all those who requested to end their residency in 2025, 4,656 were Israeli residents and 1,995 were new immigrants. By comparison, in 2024, 7,756 requests were submitted, 4,151 of them by Israeli residents and 3,605 by new immigrants. The sharpest decline was therefore recorded among the new immigrant population.

At the same time, the number of Israelis whose residency was actually terminated — whether through a voluntary request or because of a prolonged stay abroad that led to residency ending automatically — stood at 35,625 people in 2025. In 2024, that figure totaled 46,385.

According to National Insurance Institute data, the most prominent age group among those requesting to end residency is ages 31 to 40. In 2025, 2,259 people in that age group filed a request to end residency, including 565 new immigrants. They were followed by those ages 41 to 50, with 1,648 requests, including 373 from new immigrants.

The National Insurance Institute addressed the trend and said that "while in 2024 we saw a jump in the figures for ending residency in the State of Israel, in 2025 we are seeing moderation in the data, especially among new immigrants. We continue to monitor the figures and hope they will keep declining."

Still, the drop in the number of requests does not necessarily point to a change in the characteristics of the population leaving Israel. A report by the Knesset Research and Information Center, presented earlier this month to the Committee for *Aliyah*, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs, indicates that about half of those leaving Israel since 2022 have been young adults ages 20 to 44 — a share significantly higher than their relative proportion in the population.

The report also found that the number of veteran departures — Israeli-born residents or immigrants who had lived in the country for at least five years — reached about 51,000 people in 2023, an increase of 53% compared with 2021. In 2024, Israeli-born residents already made up 52% of everyone leaving the country, compared with 48% who were foreign-born.

Another figure that continues to raise concern among decision-makers has to do with the education level of those leaving. According to the most recent data, which refers to 2022, people with academic degrees are represented among those leaving at a much higher rate than their share of the general population. Some 33.2% of those who left held a bachelor’s degree, compared with only 21.5% in the general population. The share of master’s degree holders among those leaving stood at 23.5%, nearly double their share of the population, which stands at 11.9%. Among Ph.D. holders, the gap was the most striking: 3.7% of those leaving held a doctorate, while their share of the general population stands at just 0.8%.

The data shows that although there has been some moderation in the scale of departures, the underlying trends involving the age and education level of those leaving continue to raise questions about the makeup of the population choosing to leave Israel.