The Ministry of Labor proposes to increase unemployment benefits - for the first time in 10 years

The Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation in late March announced that it initiates the law on increasing unemployment benefits, as well as to increase the effectiveness of social support of unemployed citizens. The new law will be designed to stimulate people to actively search for work. It is assumed that the legal norm will begin to work since 2019, the Prime Agency reports.

For the past 10 years, unemployment benefits in Russia remains low, the agency notes. Its minimum size is 850 rubles, the maximum is 4900 rubles.

"The draft federal law was developed in order to increase the efficiency of social support for unemployed citizens and stimulate them to actively search for work," the Ministry of Labor said. The size of the manual was not only reviewed since 2009, but not even adjusted in accordance with inflation, experts surveyed by the agency recalled.

Currently, unemployment benefits do not provide the necessary level of replacement of lost earnings even at the living wage level, the ministry emphasizes. It is precisely because of the low level of benefits that unemployed citizens do not register with social protection authorities, experts explain. Now the main question is whether it will be possible to increase the allowance to at least a subsistence minimum.

Against this background in Russia, extremely low unemployment is recorded - its level, according to Rosstat, decreased in February to 5% from 5.2% in January. So, according to the methodology of the International Labor Organization in the Russian Federation in January 2018, there were 3.9 million unemployed, according to Rosstat - 3.8 million Russians aged 15 years and older, or 5% of the labor force. At the same time, 800 thousand people were registered as unemployed in state institutions of the employment service, including 700 thousand unemployment benefits were received.

Thus, the state spends huge funds on maintaining ineffective infrastructure of employment bodies and at the same time actually does not have the opportunity to control unemployment, experts notice.

Earlier, the first deputy minister of labor Alexei Vovchenko reported that this is not about an automatic increase in benefits, but a significant change in the conditions for obtaining benefits. According to him, the main task of the project is to protect those who are really dismissed from work, as much as possible to compensate them for lost earnings and motivate these people to further search for another work, but not to motivate people to be registered in the employment service without doing anything.

In addition, the Minister of Labor, Maxim Topilin, said that the increase in unemployment benefits by changing the provision criteria is discussed by employers and trade unions, but there are no decisions yet.