The initial reason for the personnel shortage in Russia has been named: the wrong choice of profession

“Young people choose to study in completely different professions from those that are in demand on the market”

It seems that the bony hand of personnel shortage is increasingly strangling domestic employers. As the SuperJob service found out, 85% of companies in Russia are experiencing a shortage of workers, mostly qualified ones. The most in short supply professions are truck drivers, special transport operators, general workers and engineers. Meanwhile, the problem cannot be solved only by increasing wages: an effective system of training and retraining of personnel is necessary, and this cannot be created in a short time.

Over the past year, the number of vacancies posted by employers has increased by more than one and a half times (+57%), while the number of resumes from applicants has decreased by 2%. Another trend in the labor market is the aging of the workforce: the average age of those looking for work has increased by two to three years, in particular, equipment adjusters – from 43 to 46 years, mechanics – from 44 to 46, truck drivers – from 42 up to 43, loaders – from 32 to 35 years. Industrial enterprises are more actively looking for people than others; over the year, the number of vacancy announcements they posted has more than doubled. In the construction industry, the number of open vacancies increased by 31%, in the transport and logistics industry – by 35%, in IT – by 10%.

These statistics are organically complemented by the results of a study by Yakov and Partners. According to its analysts, between 2018 and 2023, the number of vacancies in the country increased by 1.8 times, and by 2030, the personnel shortage will worsen; the labor market will lack 2-4 million people. To solve a problem that is leading to a 1-2% loss in GDP, labor productivity will need to grow at least 2.4% per year – twice as fast as historical levels (the average rate over the last ten years is 1.2%).

Interestingly, in August, according to a Central Bank survey, 60% of employers reported a staff shortage. And just two months later – already 80%, and it doesn’t matter that the study was carried out by another organization: this does not change the essence of the matter. As the regulator noted, the most difficult situation is in the mechanical engineering and chemical industries. To retain and attract workers, enterprises actively increased wages, which, in turn, led to increased inflationary pressure.

“The problem has a great many different aspects,” says Sergei Smirnov, leading researcher at INION RAS. – And I would refrain from making overly free forecasts: “from 2 to 4 million” is too vague a value, and besides, we are talking about the distant year 2030. By then a lot of things could happen. Could we have imagined at the beginning of 2023 that in December the ruble exchange rate would be exactly the same, and that the Central Bank would raise the key rate several times? Today, state representatives act according to the situation, the economy is in manual control mode.”

Spheres of production are being restructured to a significant extent, for example, at automobile enterprises, where it is no longer possible to produce products in the same volumes, and workers are being laid off. People go, for example, to a car service center, where they repair and restore old models. In general, Smirnov is perplexed, the statistics are changing somehow suspiciously sharply: in July, 42% of employers experienced a labor shortage, in August – 60%, in November – 80%.

“We don’t know what awaits us next year, let alone 2030,” Alexey Zubets, a professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, continues the topic. – I don’t agree that there is a catastrophic personnel shortage in the economy; if this were so, salaries would grow much faster. And over the year they added less than 5% in real terms, which is not much. As our research shows, layoffs continue in the labor market, there is a rotation of personnel, and this is a sign of normality. The point is not that there are not enough workers at all, but that employers cannot find specialists with the qualifications they require. And if there are not enough qualified specialists, then it is necessary to create a system of personnel retraining. This is already the task of the state. If you offer even a lot of money on the market, this absolutely does not mean that you will find those people who are capable of completing a specific production task.”

In general, the Russian labor market is characterized by structural imbalances: on the one hand, enterprises require carriers of certain professional skills, and at the same time, supply absolutely does not correspond to demand. The problem has systemic roots associated with long-standing and practically irreparable shortcomings in secondary specialized, vocational and higher education, says Pavel Kudyukin, a member of the Council of the Confederation of Labor of Russia. In particular, young people choose for training completely different professions from those in demand by the market, and this situation cannot be changed by administrative methods.