They’re not exempt from the draft, but a lot of them find ways around it. More are serving now than ever before. Don’t know how many of them are on welfare. Don’t even know how to apply for welfare or what it is. Everyone gets 169 shekels (enough to buy falafels and drinks for about four people) a month for each child under 18. Is this what the Wikipedia means by ‘welfare’? If they have a lot of kids, this might add up, but still won’t go very far.
My eldest son is what you might call a “hareidi,” being a Hasid of the Bialer Rebbe. But he works hard full-time in a fish store, and did a short stint in the IDF, admittedly before he became hareidi.
A little more Googling turned up a bunch of stories from English language Israeli newspapers about the Haredi. They say the men are exempt from the draft if they do nothing but study the Torah, and the IDf loses about 13 percent of its potential draft pool each year to this exemption.
They also say that the unemployment rate for Haredi men of working age is 65 percent.
Are those sources accurate?