RBC: the government is discussing additional measures to combat shadow employment

The government is discussing additional measures to combat informal employment in Russia. This issue was raised at a strategic session on April 25, chaired by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, told RBC two attendees.

According to them, the reduction of informal employment is one of the tasks to increase the well-being of the population: those employed in the shadow sector receive an average of 30% less than those officially employed.

To counter shadow employment, the government is considering several possible measures. At the federal level, it is possible to use big data to monitor businesses, as well as to conduct inspections of companies when they detect signs of informal employment. To do this, it is proposed to use the capabilities of the Federal Tax Service. One of RBC’s interlocutors linked the monitoring to the fact that there are still workers who receive “in an envelope” wages below the minimum wage.

At the regional level, it is proposed to identify priority sectors with the highest risk of shadow employment, as well as set annual targets for its reduction. Support measures for those companies that pay “decent white wages” were also discussed at the session, the newspaper notes, but no detailed roadmap was presented on this issue.

How wrote Earlier, Vedomosti, the number of Russians employed in the informal sector of the economy decreased last year by 1.2 million people to 13.4 million, follows from Rosstat data. The proportion of workers without formal employment was 18.6% of the total workforce, the lowest since 2011, when it was 18.5% (13 million people). In the pandemic 2020, 14.1 million Russians (20%) were employed in the informal sector, a year later the figure was 14.6 million citizens (20.3%).

In the regional context, the highest percentage of informal employment in 2022 is demonstrated by Ingushetia (54%), Dagestan (51%) and Kabardino-Balkaria (48%), follows from Rosstat data. Most often, such workers work in the field of trade and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (29%). Agriculture and forestry, hunting, catching and breeding of fish are the second most popular among informal employees (16%). The third place is occupied by the transportation and storage industry (11%).