Tel Aviv, Jan 19 (IANS): Amid an ongoing complete lockdown imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of unemployed people in Israel has increased to more than 657,000, official data revealed.

The data issued on Monday by the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Israeli Employment Service said that the new figure was an increase compared to about 523,000 unemployed persons recorded in December 27, 2020, when the lockdown came into effect, Xinhua news agency reported.

The current figure raised the unemployment rate in Israel to 15.9 per cent, compared to 12.7 per cent at the beginning of the lockdown.

In October 2020, amid a previous lockdown, Israel's unemployment rate stood at 22.7 per cent, with 938,000 unemployed people.

Earlier in 2020, a peak of 27.5 pe rcent was recorded at the end of April with more than 1 million unemployed people.

The unemployment rate in the country stood at 3.9 per cent before the pandemic outbreak last February.