Economy
The Polgat textile factory was the main employer in the town until it closed in the 1990s. In 1999, Intel opened a chip fabrication plant, known as Fab 18, to produce Pentium 4 chips and flash memories. Intel received a grant of $525 million from the Israeli government to build the plant. In February, 2006, the cornerstone was laid for Intel's second Kiryat Gat plant, Fab 28, which is due to begin production in the second half of 2008. Despite this, Kiryat Gat has one of Israel's highest unemployment rates.
According to CBS figures for 2000, there were 15,257 salaried workers and 1,152 self-employed persons in Kiryat Gat. The mean monthly wage for a salaried worker was 4,125 shekels, a real change of +4.9% over the course of 2000. Salaried males had a mean monthly wage of 5,199 shekels (a real change of +7.3%) compared to 2,956 shekels for females (a real change of -1.8%). The mean income for the self-employed was NIS 5,494. A total of 1,336 residents received unemployment benefits and 6,487 received income supplements.
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