There is no unemployment in Moscow

There are very few unemployed people in Moscow
This means that there will be a lot of "immigrants"
Moscow has set a kind of record among the subjects of the federation. The number of unemployed in the capital amounted to 0.8% of the economically active population. This is the lowest figure among the federal subjects.

The information was distributed yesterday by the Moscow government's media committee. True, the attempt by Kommersant correspondents to obtain information in absolute numbers did not yield results. A committee employee who wished to remain anonymous said that he did not have such figures. He could not answer the question about the number of people employed in Moscow.
Representatives of the committee admit that the scale of hidden unemployment is higher - about 350 thousand people (70 thousand people more than in 1995). However, even these figures are much lower than those recorded in most federal subjects. In this regard, Moscow, like St. Petersburg, are the absolute leaders among Russian regions. The most difficult employment situation remains in the North Caucasus - in a number of republics in this region, the hidden unemployment rate reaches 75% of the working population. Chechnya, obviously, should be considered an absolute outsider, on whose territory, according to government experts, the rate of hidden unemployment may even exceed 75%.
In the Far East and Siberia the situation is better, but even there the number of officially registered and hidden unemployed is an order of magnitude higher than in Moscow.
In any case, Russian regions that are prosperous in terms of employment will one way or another have to come to terms with the migration factor. With such significant differences between regions, it is difficult to restrain the influx of new workers from the provinces to Moscow and other large cities. In this situation, the most far-sighted policy would be not to try to prevent “immigration” by administrative means, but to create the most favorable investment climate conducive to industrial expansion.

ANDREY B-BAGROV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 8 dated 02/11/1997, p. 6