the number of self-employed in Russia will grow to 10 million – Kommersant

In the first quarter of 2024, the number of self-employed people in Russia may reach 10 million. The number of self-employed people will also increase among young people. This was announced by the President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Sergei Katyrin.

“There are now more than 9 million self-employed people registered in the country, who have already earned 2.9 trillion rubles. Taking into account the dynamics of registrations, we can say that their number will grow to 10 million in the first quarter of next year,” Sergei Katyrin told RIA Novosti.

Mostly self-employed people work in taxis, repairs, marketing, selling their own products, in the beauty industry, in delivering goods and renting apartments.

Sergei Katyrin also referred to data from the Ministry of Economy, according to which the number of young self-employed people is growing. Thus, more than half of the self-employed (53%) are people under 35 years of age, of which 23% are under 25 years of age. The percentage of entrepreneurs under 25 years of age is growing from year to year.

At the same time, as the head of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry noted, in the regions there is a constant outflow of personnel from full-time employed workers to the self-employed. This is especially true for the beauty industry, confectionery production, baking and cooking. According to Sergei Katyrin, this trend is due to the fact that better conditions are provided for the self-employed than for micro-businesses.

“For example, they do not have checks, reporting, the obligation to pay insurance premiums, and so on. Microbusinesses essentially find themselves in discriminatory conditions. This needs to be changed: to extend to microenterprises the conditions created for the self-employed,” the official said. According to him, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry is now holding discussions with the economic bloc of the government on this issue.

How found out According to Kommersant, the services of the self-employed are now used by about half of Russian small and medium-sized businesses. At the same time, a significant proportion of self-employed people register this status formally in order to qualify for a single benefit for families with children, but de facto do not work for themselves. Authorities are considering introducing amendments to tighten self-employment income requirements for accessing benefits, in a bid to encourage them to be active in the labor market.

More details in the material “The self-employed will be called to work”.

Anastasia Larina