Russian economy needs to gain over 12 mln workers by 2032 - ministry

MOSCOW. Dec 3 (Interfax) - The Russian economy needs to gain around 1.7 million new employees each year until 2032 inclusive, with a total of 12.2 million employees to be replaced, Russian Minister of Labour and Social Protection Anton Kotyakov said, citing the ministry's new forecast for the next seven years.

"The potential requirement was worked out based on 435 sample groups which united all of the professions. The most important part of the staffing forecast today is the estimate for the staff replacement requirement, which is formed of staffing requirements for new jobs being created as well as to replace workers who are retiring. The overall replacement requirement for the seven-year period is 12.2 million workers, including 11.7 million to replace retiring employees and around 500,000 which the economy needs to fill additional jobs being created," Kotyatov said at a plenary session of the Russian Staff Forum on Wednesday.

He said that the economy needed to gain an average of approximately 1.7 million employees each year. "In average annual terms we can see that this figure is somewhat lower than the figures that we had in the first forecast, which was for a five-year period," he said. According to the initial five-year forecast, presented at the beginning of the year, around 11 million employees needed to be replaced by 2030, or 2.2 million people each year.

The minister said that this was the first time Russia had created a seven-year forecast of its labor market requirements. This year, the number of employers surveyed increased by a quarter to 330,000 companies, with staff numbers totaling 23 million people overall.

Kotyatov said that a different source of information had been used to calculate the staff replacement requirements for the seven-year forecast, raising the accuracy of the estimates.