Shrinking Labor Force Weighs on Russia’s Economic Recovery
A lack of migrant workers and a high death toll from Covid have businesses scrambling to fill openings.
Laborers harvest cabbage in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia.
Photographer: Alexandr Kryazhev/Sputnik/AP Photo
Businesses in the developed world are struggling to find workers as economies recover from the worst of the Covid-19 crisis. This has been less of a challenge for those in big emerging markets, which have larger pools of labor, with one notable exception: Russia. Millions of migrant workers fled the country when it sealed its borders last year, and it’s shown little success in corralling the virus within its own population, creating a labor shortage that’s dragging down the recovery.
“To fill new jobs, there needs to be either an influx of migrant workers or a redistribution of the existing workforce between regions, industries, and enterprises,” Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina warned last month.