Official: Russia passes peak of unemployment in July–September

MOSCOW, Oct 21 (PRIME) -- Russia has passed the peak of unemployment in July–September, and the labor market is recovering, the All-Russian Research Institute of labor protection and labor economics of the Labor and Social Protection Ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday quoting General Director Dmitry Platygin.

The Federal State Statistics Service said that Russia’s unemployment decreased to 6.3% in September from 6.4% in August. The number of officially registered unemployed stood at 3.7 million people.

“As the Labor and social Protection Ministry forecasted earlier, we passed the peak number of the unemployed in the third quarter. In September, the unemployment level decreased by 0.1 percentage point to 6.3% of the economically active population. The labor market is shifting into a recovery stage,” Platygin said as quoted by the institute.

Companies that had to fire people due to the coronavirus pandemic are now starting to hire them back. In April, the new hires only compensated the laid off by about 33%, while in the past few weeks, the newly employed exceeded the layoffs. “At the same time, businesses are very cautious now, and recovery will be slow taking into account all the factors,” he said.

The Economic Development Ministry said that Russia’s labor market is still tense, as unemployment is significantly higher than in January–March when it stood at 4.6% of the workforce.

Recruiting website HeadHunter signals to an increase in demand for employees, as job openings grew by 6% on the year in September after staying flat on the year in August and falling 2% in July.

“In addition to that, registration of people with employment services slowed down. The average daily increase of people registered with the services slowed down to 2,200 people in September from 12,000 people per day in August,” the ministry said.

“In the first half of October, a tendency emerged for the registered unemployed to contract, and it stood at 3.6 million people as of October 19.”

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