IGOR EFREMOV: “DEMOGRAPHIC SITUATION IN RUSSIA WILL IMPROVE BY THE END OF THE 2020S”

Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported, citing data fr om HR services, that in Q3 2023 the total number of vacancies in the Russian labor market increased 2.3-fold compared to the same period last year, not only in the industrial sector and the IT industry, but also in education, science, transportation, logistics, etc.

One of the issues of staff shortage may be the demographic situation, which will commence to improve, according to Igor Efremov's estimates, "only at the very end of the 2020s". Another aspect is the issue of insufficient labor productivity, as modernization was not carried out in time. This is also one of the explanations why some enterprises, and not necessarily those related to the military-industrial complex, need so much labor.

Including in the current conditions, many employers are planning to solve their tasks "here and now", for example, by attracting migrants. But, as Igor Efremov warned, it is hardly worth pinning much hope on compensating for negative demographic factors at the expense of foreign labor. "Since labor migration is usually short-term and circular. In addition, the shortage of workers is increasingly spreading to industries and territories wh ere labor migrants have never made up a significant part of the workforce, he said, and there are no recent signs of an increase in the number of labor migrants in the Russian labor market”.