Take care of work from a young age – Newspaper Kommersant No. 239 (7440) of 12/23/2022

Next year, a Strategy for the Development of Youth Policy until 2030 should appear in the Russian Federation – an instruction to prepare such a document yesterday, following the results of the State Council, was announced by Vladimir Putin. It is expected that part of the strategy’s measures will be aimed at supporting the employment of young Russians, including tax breaks and subsidies for employers who employ workers under the age of 29. The measures are being prepared against the backdrop of an expected decline in the number of able-bodied Russians and disappointing demographic forecasts.

The state youth policy strategy until 2030 should combine existing initiatives in this area and identify new areas of support for this category of the population.

“We are talking about creating an effective environment for the self-realization of young people, about the issues of the level of wages, the organization of the work of the relevant workers, and so on,” the president said after the meeting of the State Council.

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, who oversees this area of ​​government work, explained that since 2022, the federal project “Youth of Russia” has already been implemented in the Russian Federation. Previously, the government approved the rules for monitoring the implementation of youth policy with the preparation of an annual report. This should help the authorities get a picture of the condition of young Russians, their level of education, employment and average income.

In the future, as follows from the words of the Deputy Prime Minister, support measures may include programs in the field of employment, for example, employers could pay reduced insurance premiums from their salaries when hiring young people – at a rate of 7.6% (similar to the benefit, introduced for those employed in student teams from January 1, 2023). The materials for the State Council meeting also contain a proposal to limit the ability of employers to fire young employees during their first year of work – whether such an ambiguous measure will be mentioned in the list of presidential instructions following the meeting, however, is not yet clear.

It should be noted that since the end of 2021, a separate federal program to promote youth employment has already been operating, focused on Russians under the age of 29. As part of this program, to facilitate the entry of young workers into the labor market, the Ministry of Labor provides for 31 measures – from career guidance to the issuance of subsidies to employers for the employment of young people. It is assumed that direct support measures will cover 350 thousand people annually, indirect – up to 5 million (for more details, see. “Kommersant” dated November 29). According to the plan of the Ministry of Labor, this will make it possible to reduce the unemployment rate among young people to 8% by 2030 – now it is 16.2% in the age group of 20-24 years old, and 7.4% in the category of 25-29 years old.

These measures are being prepared against the backdrop of a decrease in the number of able-bodied Russians.

According to the calculations of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Human Potential of the Higher School of Economics (based on the demographic forecast of the Institute of Demography), without the involvement of migrants, the labor force in the Russian Federation will decrease by 3.9 million people by 2035. This will happen as more generations of Russians born before the early 1990s leave the labor market. The number of able-bodied population aged 40 to 59 will increase by 4 million, but young able-bodied citizens (20 to 39) will decrease by 6.6 million.

If we consider such a demographic forecast to be correct, then the role of state measures to support youth at the macro level will be small – the reduction in unemployment among young citizens is likely to happen on its own. In addition, most of the large Russian industrial and manufacturing companies, against the backdrop of a cumulative shortage of personnel, will also intensify their work with young people in order to replenish the ranks of the specialists they need.

Anastasia Manuylova