To achieve technological sovereignty in the next five years, the Russian Federation needs a million new workers
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According to the government, in order to achieve technological sovereignty in the next five years, the Russian Federation needs at least a million new workers. Most of this need, given the shortage of migrants and the growing need for manpower for the SVO, could be met by female workers – and Vladimir Putin has already announced that mothers of children under one and a half years old could return to work without losing benefits. However, along with increased activity in the labor market, the authorities expect Russian women to make an increased contribution to demographic development, and these expectations are contradictory.
Russia needs more than a million people in the next five years to ensure techno-sovereignty, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said at SPIEF 2023. “These are the most modest estimates. Everything will depend on how the Russian Federation will develop in the technology sectors that are identified as priority,” she stressed. By itself, the figure on the scale of the labor market of the Russian Federation does not look grandiose (now more than 70 million workers are employed in the country), but it can be quite difficult for employers to satisfy this need.
Thus, the Russian Federation has almost exhausted such a resource as the unemployed – as the Deputy Prime Minister noted, there are only 2.4 million people left, this is the minimum in the entire history of the Russian Federation. Only in a number of regions, as the head of the Ministry of Labor Anton Kotyakov said, the unemployment rate exceeds 10% – the situation, according to the minister, can be corrected with the help of programs to relocate workers to other regions of the Russian Federation. The influx of labor migrants, although it increased after the covid recession, is unlikely to support the labor market in the future: the main donor countries of the Russian Federation will soon also face a reduction in the working population, which will also reduce the number of people who want to work in the Russian Federation. Thus, only citizens of the Russian Federation can be considered the main source of new workers.
There are two groups among them that could, at first glance, become a new source of formal employment — Tatyana Golikova also gave an estimate of their number during the SPIEF. The first – 6 million people – those who receive a salary below the minimum wage (working part-time or receiving the rest of the salary “in the gray”). Another 12 million people “do not have any employment contracts”, which allows them to be classified as informally employed. To what extent the groups intersect, the vice-premier did not specify.
At the same time, the majority of informally employed people in the Russian Federation, as shown by a study by the Higher School of Economics, differ little from other workers in terms of professional skills. Traditionally, informal employment was considered as a source of personnel for formal employment. However, as Rostislav Kapelyushnikov, deputy head of the HSE Center for Labor Studies, previously explained to Kommersant, the informal sector also increases the demand for labor during periods of economic growth (for more details, see Kommersant on May 30) – and expect a massive flow of its workers against the background of the projected in 2023 -2024 Russia’s GDP growth is not worth it. In addition, for men in the near future, military service under a contract will act as an alternative to work – its advertising with promises of much higher pay is already very much not only in Moscow, but also in St. Petersburg.
Thus, the interest of the government to fill the labor market will be attracted by women: there is already enough evidence of this. So, SPIEF has never had such a number of sessions dedicated to involving women in science, engineering, business, etc. At the plenary discussion, Vladimir Putin promised them to keep benefits for children up to one and a half years old even when they return to work – one this could attract tens of thousands of women into the labor market. There are now about 2.5 million mothers with children of this age in the Russian Federation, and there are fewer of them working than among those who have not given birth or have older children. The Ministry of Labor, on behalf of the government, is now preparing, in addition to the adopted National Action Strategy for Women, a whole package of measures to involve them in the labor market.
The employment rate of women in the Russian Federation is indeed lower than that of men in all ages up to 40 years, and although according to ILO estimates it is quite high in international comparison, there is probably still room for improvement. However, the “labor” goals of the government may conflict with demographic ones. The birth rate in the Russian Federation is declining due to the fall in the number of women of childbearing age – and it can only be compensated by increasing the specific number of births, which means reducing employment. According to Rosstat data for 2021, for those who gave birth to one child, its level is 84.6%, for women with two children – already 77.5%, with three – 62.6%. The numbers, of course, depend on many factors, including the ability to combine work and childcare, the availability of preschool institutions and the willingness to take care of the family among men – but then the government will have to think about measures to expand them.
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