A new stream of guest workers poured into Russia

Their earnings in the Russian Federation have increased significantly

Last year, about 3.5 million labor migrants entered Russia, a third more than in 2021. The explanation is simple: against the backdrop of a shortage of low-skilled personnel, the salaries of couriers, drivers, porters, and janitors began to grow. And thanks to the stronger ruble in the spring, earnings in terms of dollars and euros increased significantly. At the same time, such a powerful influx of guest workers has its drawbacks for the economy.

According to a study by FinExpertiza, over 90% of labor migrants are citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The number of those who arrived from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Moldova, Vietnam, Turkey and China also increased last year. Analysts used data from the FSB border service, as well as migration statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In total, 13 million foreigners crossed the Russian border, while 26.6% indicated work as the purpose of their arrival. More than 40% of registrations were in Moscow and the Moscow region.

The second quarter of 2022 turned out to be the most fruitful for guest workers, when it easily compensated for the massive (against the background of a sharp collapse of the ruble) outflow of foreign labor in the first quarter. In addition to returning workers, many new ones have arrived in Russia. Meanwhile, experts call for caution in any statistics relating to the number of labor migrants. In reality, there may be much more of them than in the reports of official departments.

“Not all of these people, once in the territory of the Russian Federation, receive patents and register as labor migrants,” says Aleksey Zubets, a professor at the Financial University under the government. – For example, someone comes to us as a tourist, and then finds a job in the gray or black sector. The domestic system of labor accounting is not without sin, it would be nice to clean it of corruption, “bring it to clean water”, then we will get a more or less adequate picture.”

But under any circumstances, the Russian labor market has become more attractive to foreigners: wages have grown, as well as the demand for labor, the dollar and the euro have remained at an acceptable level for buying.

The most demanded specialties today are couriers, taxi and truck drivers, loaders, janitors, nannies, domestic servants. According to Zubets, the demand for them will only increase. The situation in the housing construction sector is quite different: the volume of work is falling, a huge amount of real estate is put up for sale (no one is buying apartments), in addition, developers are getting rid of land plots so as not to pay taxes on them. Accordingly, the need for labor in this particular sector is decreasing, and there have always been enough migrants among builders.

“We should also not forget: last year about a million people left Russia, plus in 2021 and 2022, the same number died due to covid,” says Zubets. – This gap in the labor market must be filled by someone. The population is aging, the total number of able-bodied citizens is falling for objective reasons. As a result, there are more positions that foreigners can apply for. The domestic labor market, and indeed the entire economy, requires investment and additional labor. But today this is difficult, and it is migrants who can help out here: they are less picky in terms of wages, and there is no chance to replace them with Russians.”

In 2021, covid continued to rage, there were still restrictions on entry into the country, various kinds of quarantines and lockdowns. When they were canceled or softened, the influx of labor migrants to Russia began to grow naturally, recalls Pavel Kudyukin, a member of the Council of the Russian Confederation of Labor. In his opinion, this to some extent made it possible to compensate for the loss of about a million workers who left the Russian Federation in 2022. Although we are talking about fundamentally different professional groups. In Russia, there has always been a problem of a shortage of personnel in low-skilled specialties: “their own” are extremely reluctant to take these places, unlike the “Varangians”.

The role of labor migrants in the economy is seen by Kudyukin as contradictory: on the one hand, this is one of its obvious drivers, on the other hand, migrant workers contribute to wage dumping, since they agree to any conditions of the employer. In addition, hundreds of thousands of foreigners are employed in the shadow sector, and illegal employment is outside state control and taxation.