It looks like neither the government nor the business community can forecast labor market’s movement for the nearest years.
Photo: Mikhail Razuvaev
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Economy to Lack Workers
Economic Development Minister German Gref reported the accelerated growth of economy to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin yesterday. The official outlook for 2006 growth of GDP could be upgraded from 6.6 percent to 6.8 percent or 6.9 percent. In this environment, not only the unemployment but also the new jobs are going down in number, signaling new hurdles for the economic growth are shaping here.
If Russia’s GDP gained just 6.4 percent past year, the 2006 outlook will be upgraded for the second time already, from 6 percent to 6.9 percent. The GDP soared 8.2 percent in October, which isn’t common for economy of Russia.
Another trend is the stable decline in unemployment. As of late October, Russia had 5 million unemployed, or 6.6 percent of the economically active population, Russia’s Statistics Service reported.
But because of the poor demographic situation, the number of working population here will be annually declining by 1 million starting from 2007. It was 74.6 million as of late October, or roughly 52 percent of all population of the country, Russian Statistics Service said.
So, on demographic factor alone, the number of unemployed will reduce from 7.4 million in 2006 to 7 million in 2009, according to Economic Development Ministry. This trend will be reinforced by toughened migration policy of Russia, including imposing quotas on foreign labor.
The toughened migration policy will help curtail unemployment, said a source at Economic Development Ministry on condition of anonymity. The paradox is that the number of new jobs is also going down in Russia, according to the source.
It looks like the government cannot clearly forecast the labor market’s movement for the nearest years, no can the business community, by the way. “We will set to keeping track of the situation when the number of able-bodies citizens starts decreasing by a million a year,” the source said. “It is the mere discussion now.”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 28, 2006
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