Productivity and shortage of labor: the case of Russia

Alexander A. Grebenyuk, Moscow State University

The impact of falling birth rate in 90 years in Russia are beginning to have a significant impact on the labor market. In the period up to 2022, the population of Russia will lose about 8.5 million people of working age. Moreover, the average annual decline during this period will be about one million people in accordance with a low variant projection. Reducing the rate reduction is expected only after 2017. In addition, Russia's population will to grow old rapidly, especially after 2015. The share of working-age population the period under review will be reduced from 61% to 55%, and the proportion of the population over working age population will increase by 4.4%. The stimulation of migration is the one way of improvement of the negative demographic situation of Russia. But at the same time, there are significant internal resources in Russia. In the first place it is necessary to say about a growth of labor productivity and reducing labor-intensive. Russian labor productivity is 26.8% of this indicator of the United States of America, 40% of the indicator of Japan and Germany, 33.3% of the indicator of France, 36% of the indicator of Sweden. We have calculated three predicted variants of reducing the demand for labor when labor productivity growth in a 3%, 4% and 6%, and the growth of the national GDP in 3.5-3.7%. The results suggest that the demand for labor will be reduced and will vary from approximately 12 million people (labor productivity growth of 3% per year) to 4 million people (labor productivity growth of 4% per year). At the same time, with an annual 6 percent increase in productivity by the 2018 labor shortages will disappear and there will be a surplus of supply over demand of manpower in the future.