According to the Ministry of Labor, now in Russia 2.6 million people are officially considered unemployed. This was announced by the Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation Andrei Pudov, RIA Novosti quoted him as saying.
According to the official, the main task now is to minimize indicators and normalize the labor market to pre-crisis levels. “We plan, of course, to reduce the number of unemployed citizens. If we take the current data, retrospective, then on January 20 there were 2.6 million people, in September, respectively, 3.7 million people,” said Pudov.
Official statistics take into account only those Russians who joined the labor exchange. Only those who have been looking for work in the last four weeks are considered unemployed and are ready to start work within a week. Also, the unemployed does not apply to those who meet these requirements, but do not want to find a job in a position that is not suitable for their professional profile and level of salary.
As analysts of FinExpertiza pointed out, the official data on unemployment in Russia are significantly underestimated. According to experts, in the second quarter of 2020, 4.87 million unemployed Russians were not included in the official statistics – this is more than half of the total.