Translated material
Deadly benefit
The government and trade unions did not agree on forecasts regarding the growth rate of unemployment
Over the past three months, the number of unemployed in Russia has decreased significantly - Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov announced this yesterday. The deputy chairman of the government thus confirmed the optimistic forecast of the head of the Ministry of Health and Social Development Tatyana Golikova, which she announced last Monday during a meeting with the president. In turn, trade union leaders are more pessimistic - judging by the forecast for the fall, which was announced last Friday by the Chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, Mikhail Shmakov, more than 400 thousand Russians may lose their jobs.Let us recall that on August 3, at a meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, Ms. Golikova reported that “in the summer there was a tendency towards a decrease in the number of actually registered unemployed citizens” and, in addition, tension in the labor market had decreased somewhat. “If we compare July with June, then in June 2.4 people applied for one vacancy, in July there were already 2.1,” the head of the Ministry of Health and Social Development said then. At the same time, we note that literally on the eve of the minister’s meeting with the president, it was not a decline, but an increase in unemployment that was recorded, which Ms. Golikova herself was forced to state: “The exception (against the background of the general downward trend. - Ed. ) was the previous one before the last one. week. There was a slight increase of 9 thousand.”
Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Zhukov confirmed the minister’s arguments that the situation on the labor market is slowly improving: from the speech of the deputy prime minister it followed that from April to July, total unemployment (fixed according to the methods of the International Labor Organization) decreased by 400 thousand - from 6. 7 to 6.3 million people. This is 8.3% of the total economically active population. The number of officially unemployed Russians registered with employment services has also decreased and currently stands at 2 million 140 thousand people.
“We see that over the past three months both the total number of unemployed and the number of registered unemployed have been decreasing,” the Deputy Prime Minister commented on the figures he cited. According to Zhukov, such a decline is largely “the result of regional programs to stabilize the situation on the labor market.” Although, the Deputy Prime Minister admitted, the seasonal factor plays a certain role in reducing unemployment, and this factor “suggests that in the fall the total number of unemployed increases.” But in general, as Mr. Zhukov assured, the situation on the labor market is controlled by the government, which will do everything possible to avoid a serious surge in unemployment in the fall.
The FNPR's forecasts are strikingly different from how the Cabinet of Ministers sees the situation. According to Mikhail Shmakov, in the fall there will be at least 3 million officially registered unemployed people in Russia alone, and the total number of citizens who have lost their earnings could reach 10 million people. Such concerns, according to Mr. Shmakov, are dictated by the results of monitoring conducted in recent months by the Federation of Independent Trade Unions. “When conducting the study, enterprises were surveyed that would potentially reduce the number of employees,” explained the leader of the FNPR. “According to the study, 45% of the surveyed companies reported optimizing costs by reducing staff.”
Based on the results of this monitoring, trade unionists conclude that as early as August, about 50 thousand people may lose their jobs and more than 160 thousand will join the army of unemployed in September. The FNPR believes that by October, enterprises will exhaust internal resources with which they can support workers in a part-time mode (now, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Development, more than 1 million 200 thousand people exist in this mode and about 300 thousand are idle the administration's fault). “In general, the number of workers who may be laid off in the fall may fluctuate between 200-400 thousand,” predicts Mikhail Shmakov.
The Ministry of Health and Social Development promises to mitigate the social consequences of the economic crisis by allocating more than 35 billion rubles next year. for programs to reduce tensions in the labor market. In any case, this is exactly the amount mentioned by Deputy Head of the Ministry Maxim Topilin. According to him, this year more than 43 billion rubles have been allocated from the budget for similar programs. -- the allocated funds are and will be used in the future for the organization of public works, retraining of workers and controlled labor migration -- relocation of unemployed citizens to other regions for employment.
“The fact that the government allocates quite a lot of money both to combat unemployment and to organize public works is, of course, correct,” noted FNPR executive secretary Alexander Shershukov in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent. “Let’s say that in the 90s the unemployment rate was much higher than today, but there was no talk of any public works.” By involving those who have been laid off in public works, it is, of course, possible to reduce unemployment rates, if only because a person employed in such work is not considered unemployed. But, Mr. Shershukov notes, this will only be a formal reduction. “For public works, as I heard, they pay a maximum of 6 thousand rubles, which is clearly not enough for a normal existence,” emphasizes the executive secretary of the FNPR. In order for the real number of unemployed to decrease, industry must be fully operational. “But in the current conditions, the economy cannot function fully, and therefore, all those industries that are now, to put it mildly, in a problematic state, are not able to provide a sufficient number of jobs,” states Mr. Shershukov. According to trade unions, the most affected industries include mechanical engineering, metalworking and metallurgy in general, a difficult situation in the woodworking industry and in the public sector - primarily in education.
The government, in turn, promises to more closely monitor the situation on the labor market. “We have instructed Rosstat to more quickly prepare information on the total number of unemployed,” Alexander Zhukov said yesterday. The statistics agency will have to provide monthly reports to the government, rather than quarterly, as is the case now. “We do not argue with the fact that during the summer the growth rate of unemployment decreased,” notes FNPR executive secretary Alexander Shershukov. - We are more concerned about autumn - the forecasts for this period are the most unfavorable. We don't have long to wait until autumn: we'll wait and see who was right; “But it’s better to count on the worst case scenario than to hope that everything will work out.”