Elizabeth Schwartz Cohen lost count of how many times she found herself glued to her phone in her Tel Aviv apartment in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, bracing for the next missile alert and the scramble to a shelter.
Now, Tel Aviv is under fire once again, only this time, Schwartz Cohen is almost 6,000 miles away, back home in Hoboken, New Jersey, waiting to give birth.
Schwartz Cohen, a 34-year-old American tech worker, says it was the “strong sense of community and the contagious energy of the people” that first drew her to Israel. But in 2024, six years after moving there, she became one of several thousand tech workers to leave the country in what she described as a “mass exodus.”
Three tech workers who have left or are considering leaving Israel told Business Insider the ongoing conflicts are not the only thing that drove them out of the country.
“It’s either about priorities shifting, wanting to return to be close to family when you enter that life phase, financial incentives, or maybe just the war and just not wanting to raise your kids around the alarms,” Schwartz Cohen said.
Priced out of the ‘startup nation’
Israel’s tech ecosystem includes several thousand startups, alongside offices for Big Tech companies like Intel, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Among its homegrown tech successes are Wix, the website development company, Fiverr, the online marketplace for freelance services, and Waze, the satellite navigation company that Google acquired for $1.15 billion in 2013.
From the 1990s, Israel experienced rapid growth in “high-tech,” or the innovative technology industry. The number of high-tech employees in Israel increased each year over the past decade, until 2024, when the number of employees decreased by 1.2% from 2023, according to the latest data published by the Israeli government’s technological research and investment arm.
Roughly 8,300 high-tech employees left Israel between October 2023 and July 2024, representing 2.1% of the total high-tech employees in 2024, the data shows.
Itai Ater, an economics professor at Tel Aviv University, told Business Insider that in addition to war, he believes political factors and the cost of living are driving people out. According to the Tech Cities Index, which measures purchasing power for software engineers in global cities, the median salary in Tel Aviv is $54,000 lower than in New York City.
Mercer’s 2024 Cost of Living City Ranking, published in December that year and the most recent available, also paints a picture of how expensive Israel can feel for expats. It ranked Tel Aviv 16th globally among the most expensive cities for international professionals, second only to Dubai in the Middle East.
“For the first two years I was working, I was happy to take a lower salary compared to New York City, just because I was so happy to be in Israel,” Schwartz Cohen said. Once she got married and later became pregnant, her priorities shifted.
“These tech companies are paying middle America salaries but for the cost of New York City living,” she said, adding: “A lot of the more entrepreneurial or independent-minded people I know have either relocated to the US or found ways to earn income outside Israel.”
Reuven Rivlin, Israel’s president from 2014 to 2021, who is now leading the Israeli fintech company BitCore’s bid with the Lava Foundation to launch a digital shekel, told Business Insider that while Israel remains a “startup nation,” the brain drain needs to be addressed.
In an unpublished study co-authored by Ater, which was viewed by Business Insider, the researchers warn that Israel’s economy is especially exposed to talent loss. “Unlike countries with abundant natural resources, Israel’s economy relies heavily on high-quality human capital, especially in the high-tech sector and other knowledge-intensive industries,” it reads.
Discontent started before the war for some
Erez Schneider, an Israel-born product manager at an AI company, worked in Israel’s tech sector for 17 years before moving to Switzerland in September 2024. He appreciated the opportunities the booming industry afforded him and the support network he found in the sector ever since he was a student. “I would say your social status is high,” Schneider, 39, said.
When it came to deciding whether to stay in Israel or move to Switzerland, where his wife is from, it was ultimately the political climate that drove him out. In particular, he pointed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul, a legislative push launched in 2023 to tilt the balance of power away from the courts and toward the Israeli government.
Starting life from scratch in Zurich has been difficult for Schneider. He’s made a sideways career move in tech. Still, he doesn’t believe he’ll move back. “I’m always thinking about it, but I’m not going to do it,” he said.
Schneider was struck by how many Israelis have joined him in Switzerland in recent months. “We have an ‘Israelis in Tech’ group,” Schneider said. “At least every week there’s someone new.”
Conflict is taking its toll
Cassio Leens, 36, a Brazilian fraud analyst at an Israeli fintech company, moved to Ramat Gan, a city next to Tel Aviv, in 2020, motivated to relocate by economic opportunity and Zionism. Six years later, he said he’s no longer convinced of either and has been considering leaving Israel since October 2023.
“At the beginning of the outbreak of the war with Hamas, you’d read in the news about community and people coming together,” he said. “It didn’t feel like that. It felt like war.”
Over the past two-and-a-half years, Leens, like many other Israelis, has had to take cover in public shelters as sirens sounded during attacks from Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
During the June 2025 conflict between Israel and Iran, he said colleagues “left the next day, even with their kids.”
Leaving is rarely about just ‘one factor’
The emigration trend is concerning but not yet an emergency, experts told Business Insider. Given Israel’s 10 million-strong population, Ater said he doesn’t see the number of people leaving as a major threat for now.
Alex Weinreb, a research director at Israel’s Taub Center for Social Policy Studies, said the Israeli tech sector “is continuing to thrive and grow rapidly.”
Among the friends Schwartz Cohen made in Israel, many of whom work in tech, she said she has few expat friends left in the country and even fewer planning to stay long term. As in her case, she said leaving is rarely about just one thing. “I don’t think anyone who leaves can pinpoint one factor as the main root cause,” she said.
Nine months pregnant and preparing to give birth any day now, Schwartz Cohen said another motivation for leaving — beyond political instability, money, and war — had crystallized lately. “I didn’t really want to start a family away from my family,” she said. “I felt like I really needed my mom.”
Do you have a story to share about leaving Israel? Contact the reporters at jzitser@businessinsider.com and ccheong@businessinsider.com
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