The Izvestia newspaper – on Sunday – quoted experts and research from the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences as saying that Russia is suffering from a severe labor shortage, and indicated that the shortage exceeds the ceiling of 4.8 million workers and employees in 2023, and this problem will continue acutely in 2024.
Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said last month that the decline in Russia’s workforce threatens economic growth, at a time when Moscow is pumping financial and material resources into the army.
Russia is witnessing the departure of hundreds of thousands of citizens following the war it launched against Ukraine in February 2022, and according to the newspaper, among the departures are highly qualified information technology specialists.
News agencies indicates that the waves of exodus out of Russia escalated after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization of about 300,000 conscripts in September 2022. Earlier this month, Putin praised the historically low unemployment rate of 2.9%.
Putin says that he does not see a need for a new wave of military mobilization at this time.
The Izvestia newspaper quoted the author of the research, Nikolai Akhapkin, as saying that the labor shortage increased sharply in 2022 and 2023. She noted that demand is particularly high for drivers and store workers.
According to official data, reported by the newspaper, the number of job vacancies increased to 6.8% by mid-2023, up from 5.8% a year ago.
The newspaper quoted the new research as saying: “If we expand the data provided by Rosstat (the official statistics agency) to include the entire labor force, the labor shortage in 2023 will initially reach 4.8 million people.”
It was reported that Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov said that the workforce shortage is strongly felt in the manufacturing, construction and transportation sectors, forcing companies to increase wages in an attempt to attract more employees.
The newspaper quoted Tatiana Zakharova from the Russian University of Economics, named after the Russian thinker G.V. Plekhanov, as saying that the labor shortage will likely continue during the next year, and finding someone to fill the positions of factory workers, engineers, doctors, and teachers, among other fields, will be particularly difficult.
