Page 35 - RUSRptSept18

4.5 Labour and income
4.5.1 Labour market, unemployment dynamics
Unemployment in Russia fell by 2,400 to a total of 684,700 as of August 15, its lowest level since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Minister of Labour Maxim Topilin said on August 20.
Russia’s economy has been recovering, albeit at a lackluster pace, but Russia is currently enjoying full employment and that has started to drive up salaries. The growth of real wages and disposable income growth remained robust in July, Rosstat reported this week, with real wages up to 8% growth y/y, increasing from 7.2% in June. Real disposable incomes also grew by 2% y/y versus 0.7% y/y in June.
The tight labour market is a consequence of the slow growth as although companies are profitably they remain reluctant to borrow money or invest in expansion thanks to political uncertainties both at home and abroad.
"The current low unemployment rates is a historical minimum of registered unemployment in the whole history of this indicator - since 1991," the press service of the Ministry of Labour said.
According to Topilin, the low unemployment rate is due to a shortage of personnel, which is a consequence of the demographic dip caused by the collapse of life expectancy during the shock therapy years of the early 1990s. The dip in the curve has now arrived in the working population age range and there are simply too few Russians to fill workbench places.
"Those who are born during the postwar baby boom are now leaving the work force and are starting to be replaced by the smaller number of people born in the 1990s," Topilin said. A year earlier in August the number of unemployed in Russia was 784,200 people, he recalled.
The Kremlin has been trying to tackle its demographic time bomb in recent years by promoting a maternity support programme with generous subsides to families with two or more children. At the same time a recent decision to increase the average retirement age will also add as many as 5mn workers to
35 RUSSIA Country Report September 2018 www.intellinews.com