Page 48 - RusRPTJul20

According to a May 2020 study by SimplyWise, four in ten Americans would not be able to come up with $500 in cash in a single day if they needed to. According to NAFI polls conducted in February and March, 42% of Russians could continue to live normally for a month if their primary income source was stopped, without needing to take out a loan. If extended to three months, that number was reduced to 26%. On average, Russians had enough savings for only 63 days without work.
Russia’s unemployment rate stood at 6.1% in May, ​Labour Minister Anton Kotyakov said on June 23, an increase from 5.8% recorded in April by the state statistics service, ​Reuters​ reported. Speaking at a conference run by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Kotyakov said the domestic labour market had made it through the peak of the coronavirus pandemic better than a number of other countries. He said the domestic labour market was expected to begin its recovery in the fourth quarter. The unemployment rate announced by Kotyakov is slightly lower than the 6.2% analysts polled by Reuters had expected for May.
The number of officially registered unemployed in Russia has jumped 3.5-fold since April 2020​, Interfax reported citing Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who said nevertheless that the growth in unemployment was not "explosive". Previously President Vladimir Putin, during his latest address of June 23, ordered the government and regional authorities to recover the labour market from the consequences of the coronavirus (COVID-19) by 2021.
The number of officially registered unemployed jumped from 0.73mn in March to 2.1mn in May​, with people likely more keen on registering to receive additional unemployment benefits. The estimated total number of unemployed in March 2020 increased by 0.23mn people to 4.5mn, according to the data from the RosStat statistics agency. The level of unemployment rose from 4.7% in March to 5.8% in April to 6.1% in May. Previously, in August 2019 unemployment in Russia was down to an all-time low of 4.3%.
Unemployment continues to climb in Russia. In the first two weeks of June, the number of official unemployment claims rose 16% to 2.42 million people. ​On the bright side, the pace of unemployment is slowing, Russia’s labor minister claims. Whereas from mid-April to May, approximately 220-250,000 people declared unemployment each week, in the past two weeks, there were 334,000 claims. That said, official unemployment statistics do not convey the true scale of the situation as individuals in the shadow economy are unable to claim unemployment. According to Rosstat, estimates from June 1 indicate that Russia has over 4.5 million unemployed workers.
The number of registered unemployed has traditionally been much lower than in Rosstat’s survey-based estimate.​ Registering for unemployment in Russia is a laborious process and the benefit paid out is quite small. With the government’s significant increase in the unemployment benefit during the corona pandemic, unemployed workers have greater incentive to register.
​Based on a survey conducted in late May, researchers at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics found that 10% of respondents reported that they had lost their jobs​, and nearly a third said they knew somebody in their immediate circle who had been furloughed. 40% of respondents said their wages were lower than before the pandemic. Labour incomes declined most for workers involved in construction and in service branches. The statistical
48​ RUSSIA Country Report​ July 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com