Netanyaruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Diamonds and precious stones
Cutting and polishing workshops, including in Kiryat Sanz
Netanya was where Israel's diamond industry started — the Ophir plant, opened in 1939, was the first diamond-polishing works in Mandatory Palestine. The trading centre later moved to Ramat Gan, but polishing, cutting and the associated trades kept a real footprint here.
Manufacturing and logistics
The Pinchas Sapir industrial park in the south and the Kiryat Eliezer zone in the east, including IKEA's first Israeli branch
Two substantial industrial zones with their own railway station in the south. Food, plastics, metals, packaging and distribution, well connected to Highway 2 and Highway 4 and to the port at Ashdod.
Tourism and hospitality
Around 19 hotels with roughly 1,450 rooms, the promenade restaurants, and the ten Blue Flag beaches
Netanya has been an Israeli holiday town since the 1930s and remains one, which sustains a year-round hospitality labour market and a lot of French- and Russian-speaking front-of-house work — an unusually accessible first job for a newcomer with the right languages.
Healthcare
Laniado Hospital in Kiryat Sanz
A voluntary hospital founded by the Sanz Rebbe serving a regional population of more than 450,000, and the city's principal hospital. A significant employer of clinical and nursing staff, with a religious institutional character that is worth understanding before you apply.
Sport and physical education
The Wingate Institute, immediately south of the city
Israel's national centre for physical education and sport sits on the coast at Netanya's southern edge — the national training base, the coaching college and the sports-science establishment, and an employer of coaches, physiologists and sports scientists that has no equivalent elsewhere in the country.
Professional and financial services for a francophone market
Estate agencies, law firms, accountants and mortgage brokers working in French
A genuine local specialism rather than a curiosity: a large francophone population, much of it buying property, sustains a professional services layer that operates in French. If you have French plus a professional qualification, this is the Israeli city where that combination is worth the most.
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