Column by Anastasia Manuylova on the contradictions of public employment

Last week, the government introduced a bill to the State Duma that would change the hiring process for government jobs by requiring all new employees to fill out a single questionnaire, including information about wealth. The personnel service will have the right to check the data, involving other departments. The goal is to eliminate conflicts of interest in hiring and reduce corruption. The initiative itself, follows from the explanatory note, was prepared in pursuance of one of the presidential decrees back in 2019 and is among the measures that the Ministry of Labor has implemented over the past few years to combat corruption. But a systematic approach to this in the conditions that have changed over the past year may have an unexpected side effect.

The Russian labor market, which has always been characterized by relatively low unemployment, in 2022 faced its historical minimum, the possible reasons for which we have already written more than once (see Kommersant dated July 7), which in the future may not only turn into employment problems for the state from key employers, but also to raise the question of how to provide human resources for itself, before the state.

In the Russian Federation, about 2.5 million people work in the positions of civil servants, excluding the public sector, where there is a shortage of personnel for a long time, which makes the executive bodies of all levels together the largest employer in the country. But taking into account the struggle for personnel in the labor market, the attractiveness of the civil service may significantly decrease: in salary offers in the conditions of a deficit budget, it is unlikely that ministries, services and state agencies can compete with the private sector (where wages, in particular, can grow by 10% this year). they will be able to – so far civil servants are expected only by annual indexation of salaries within 5%.

In the last year, the public sector is also rapidly losing another advantage that allowed it to compete with business management – the level of workload: with unclear salary prospects, the workload of employees who are forced to ensure the functioning of the executive branch in the extreme conditions of the political and economic crisis is growing rapidly.

Under these conditions, relying on a rich choice for the public sector from promising candidates with the least corruption risks may turn out to be overly optimistic – additional checks may shift their choice in favor of private companies that, in the conditions of economic restructuring, need personnel so much, especially with experience in anti-crisis management in a rapidly changing economy. environment, for the acquisition of which the treasury has already paid. It seems that government personnel departments, which in recent years have effectively poached employees from businesses with promises of stability, have something to worry about.