More than two thirds of Russians were quite confident about the security of their employment, while 20% feared losing their jobs, а recent study by the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy revealed, according to TASS.
The study, conducted in 2018, was released by the experts from the institute and the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). It is based on the results of a survey among 3,000 people at the age from 25 to 65.
According to the study, highly experienced employees and managers are most confident about keeping their jobs. Semiskilled specialists found their positions less stable, while blue collars and workers, even skilled ones, feel the risk of losing their job is high.
The study states that people aged 55-65 years are most insecure about their future. Only a third of those people who are employed now believe that they will be able to easily find a new job, no worse than the current one. Almost half of them (45%) think that it will be difficult to do, and 20.8% consider it impossible. Moreover, the older the workers, the more difficult it is for them to find work, the study shows.
Russia’s labor force has declined for the third year straight, by 800,000 people between January-March 2018 and January-March 2019, the researchers said. The country’s total number of workers totaled 75 million people of working age during the first three months of this year.
“The labor force reduction has been happening since 2016 but the process has now accelerated,” the authors wrote.
Russia is attempting to increase labor productivity by the end of President Vladimir Putin’s current term in 2024, following a failed attempt to increase productivity by 2018. Unpopular pension reforms gradually raising Russians’ retirement ages are also meant to boost the size of the labor force, whose productivity is projected to grow starting in 2020.
