Russian business has increased its expenses on paying freelancers

This year, Russian companies have significantly increased payments to freelancers working for them in Europe. Analysts from the Solar Staff service came to this conclusion after analyzing the dynamics of payments from their client companies to performers. Let us recall that in 2022, after the start of the military operation in Ukraine, according to various estimates, up to 1 million people left Russia. Some of them continued to work for Russian organizations, fulfilling orders remotely.

As follows from the collected statistics, Russian business has increased its costs of paying freelancers, despite the unstable ruble exchange rate and great difficulties with cross-border transactions. Monthly transfers to freelancers located in the European Union increased by an average of 32% compared to 2022, and by 19% in non-EU European countries. For example, in September of this year they amounted to 117.1 thousand rubles. and 74.7 thousand rubles. respectively. The number of freelancers from the EU who work with companies from Russia decreased by 5%, and from European countries outside the EU (Great Britain, Moldova, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania) increased by 12%.

The most popular freelance services: training (17% of performers), creation of illustrations and design (12.7%), translation (9.5%), website and mobile application development (6.6%), branding (6.2%) , transcription (5%) and telephone interviews (4.9%). Note that, contrary to popular belief, the share of software developers in European freelancing is insignificant. As Solar Staff explained to Kommersant, it is more profitable for Russian companies to work with programmers from the Russian Federation or CIS countries. It is cheaper, and the level of staff training is no worse.

Solar Staff notes that in the future, the demand for workers from European countries “outside the EU” will only grow, since under sanctions, it is easier for companies from Russia to work with personnel from countries outside the European Union. Demand will also be supported by the current shortage of personnel on the Russian labor market (see Kommersant, October 4). At the same time, a deterrent will be the reluctance to hire employees who are unable to attend the office—over the past year, Russian companies have begun to massively abandon the remote work format (for more details, see Kommersant on March 29).

Anastasia Manuilova