Transformation of the nature of employment in post-Soviet Russia
Authors:   Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics, Babyshev Vyacheslav Yu. 
Published: October 2024

The subject of the article is the Russian specifics of the nature of employment against the background of highly developed countries. The aim is to analyze the evolution of the nature of employment as a result of demographic and socio-economic transformations in Russia. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the consideration of the forms of employment as a result of the combined influence of demographic, sectoral and professional-labor transformations (existing works either did not analyze the reasons for the transformation of the nature of employment or limited to its individual aspects). The research method is a descriptive identification of the main theoretical approaches to the essential aspects of the nature of employment and their practical verification through statistical analysis on the basis of ILO, OECD and WB world statistics in correlation with the main stages of the socio-economic development of Russia after 1991. The analysis was carried out over a long period of time, starting from 1992, taking into account Russia’s economic cycles, which made it possible to trace the evolution of the nature of employment taking into account the transformation of socio-economic conditions. The simultaneous analysis of changes in all forms of employment was carried out, which made it possible to identify the Russian specifics of combining elements of standard and non-standard employment. It is concluded that with a certain lag in the sphere of demographic ageing and sectoral transformation in the form of shifting employment from the productive sector to the service sector, Russia, compared to highly developed countries, is characterized by a stronger differentiation of jobs by skill level and nature of labor operations (employment is more concentrated in two opposite sectors of mental highly skilled labor and manual physical low-skilled labor). The opinion of a number of authors about the strengthening of non-standard forms of employment in Russia has been verified and refuted. After the transition to capitalism, the basis of employment remains wage labor, and forms of non-wage labor (except for employers) during recessions are more of a transitional forced nature. At the same time, the share of informal employment has increased in Russia, but the basis of the labor force functioning regime is still full-time permanent employment (this observation refutes the opinion of a number of authors about the close connection between informal employment and other forms of non-standard employment). The conclusion is made that in the future the Russian labor market will see a strengthening of standard employment in the form of permanent wage labor, which will be beneficial to both employees (whose influence will increase due to the shift of the age structure towards older ages) and employers (due to increased requirements to the level of personnel qualification). At the same time, a certain increase in the share of temporary employment is possible in case of economic growth. Given that non-standard forms of employment in Russia mean a deterioration in the quality of jobs, the strengthening of standard forms of employment should be seen as a positive phenomenon. The results of this article can be used by Russian government agencies when planning the state employment policy, as well as by employers when taking into account the Russian specifics of the labor force in the preferred nature of employment.