The official number of unemployed in Russia declined to 684.7 thousand people from August 8 to August 15, which became the minimum rate since the early 1990s, head of the Russian Ministry of Labor Maxim Topilin said.
"This is the historical minimum of registered unemployment since records began - since 1991," he stressed.
According to him, the low unemployment rate is caused by the demographic crisis of the early 1990s.
According to the Ministry of Labor, as of August 15, the level of registered unemployment in the country as a whole was 0.9% of the total economically active population. A year earlier, this figure was 1%.
At the same time, the number of vacancies declared by employers amounted to 1.7 million units, Interfax reports.
The vice-rector of the Academy of Labour and Social Relations Alexander Safonov, speaking to a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that a record unemployment rate of 0.9% is just Rosstat's data, while real unemployment is much higher. "According to Rosstat, about 700,000 people are on unpaid leave every month - which can only mean hidden unemployment. According to the HSE studies, about 2.5 million young people aged 15 to 25 are neither studying nor working," he pointed out.
As for 1.7 million open vacancies, these are jobs that people do not want to go to. "This is due to the fact that wages are low, and these vacancies are distributed among employees. Tthat is, they de jure exist, but de facto they do not. In addition, they are mainly low-paid and low-skilled jobs, which do not provide a normal standard of living. And by the way, all our vacancies are concentrated mainly in 5 regions - Moscow, Moscow region, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar and Khanty-Mansiysk," the vice-rector of the Academy of Labour and Social Relations concluded.
