Scientists expect a decrease in the number of working pensioners in Russia to 5.6 million by 2025

The number of working pensioners will drop to 5.6 million by 2025 due to pension reform. This is stated in the scientific article “The balance of labor resources: traditional and modern methods of calculation and formation” by Alexei Kashepov from the Institute for Demographic Research of the Federal Scientific Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the journal “Social and Labor Research”, which is published by the All-Russian Research Institute of Labor. The article is published by the newspaper “News”. At the end of 2022, the number of working pensioners was 7.9 million.

The reduction in the number of working pensioners was also affected by the lack of indexation of old-age benefits for this category of citizens, according to another article in the same labor journal, authored by professors of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Alexander Safonov and Moscow Financial and Law University Sergei Peskov. They emphasize that because of this, it is unprofitable for people to work in the legal field and some of the workers move to the gray sector, where labor conditions and productivity are lower.

Experts note that the reduction in the number of working pensioners in general has a negative impact on the dynamics of the labor force in Russia. By mid-2023, Russia is still experiencing a shortage of personnel – in April, unemployment was a record 3.3%. The pandemic and partial mobilization put additional pressure on the market.

The growth of external migration can become a real way to increase the labor force in Russia, experts say. According to Alexey Kashepov, by 2025 the average annual number of foreign workers will be 3.5 million people. In 2022, this figure amounted to 3.47 million people, according to Izvestia, FSB data.