The study showed trends in the labor market: mechanics are fleeing the housing and communal services sector

Demand for blue-collar jobs has increased sharply

Over the past year, the demand for representatives of manufacturing professions has increased sharply, primarily for mechanics, millers, molders and machine operators. These are the data of a large job search service. The number of vacancies in the segment increased by 1.7 times, and salary offers in December 2023 were on average 20% higher than in January.

Despite the outward goodness, the trend has side effects that have an extremely negative impact on other sectors of the economy. In particular, in the public utilities sector, from where people en masse are moving to enterprises of the military-industrial complex.

“The increase in average wages was 20%. If in January employers offered an average of 53,282 rubles, then in December – 64,055,” note the authors of the study. According to their data, the largest increase in the average salary offered was observed for mechanics, milling operators and machine operators – by 34%, 38% and 37%, respectively.

“An increase in demand and wages does not mean an increase in supply in the labor market,” says Alexei Zubets, a professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. – To train as a milling machine operator or machine operator, you need to spend at least two years in the classrooms of a vocational school or college, as it is called now. Basically, this kind of specialists is in demand by enterprises of the military-industrial complex, where people go for big money. In fact, qualified personnel are being washed away from those places where employers are not able to pay as much. As a result, in a number of regions, business remains under the threat of production closures.

Municipal municipal services, with their standardized wages, are especially affected. The outflow of the same welders and mechanics there is huge, which increases the risk of accidents, especially in conditions of extremely low temperatures. There have already been several cases of heating mains breaking due to improper operation of boiler rooms by employees. Of course, Zubets argues, you can try to retrain people from other, non-production sectors. But it’s unlikely to find anyone willing: an accountant or marketer won’t become a mechanic.

In general (with the exception of certain defense enterprises), business has reached the point beyond which it will no longer be able to raise wages for employees, states Nikita Maslennikov, a leading expert at the Center for Political Technologies. According to him, the problem is aggravated by the creeping degradation of the education and health care systems in recent years, whose condition directly affects labor productivity. And if its growth is not ensured, the labor shortage in the economy will be felt more and more acutely and by 2030 could reach four million people.