August 03, 2026

The Cure for Russia’s Labor Shortage Is Worse Than the Disease

By: Samuel Bendett

This article was originally published in Foreign Policy.

Among the various challenges that Russia has faced since its ill-conceived full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of the most acute has been a severe labor shortage. Russia’s deepening demographic crisis, combined with mass emigration and recruitment of hundreds of thousands of men into the army, has sharply exacerbated the problem. Meanwhile, automation and digitalization—which could partially offset the labor shortage—have advanced too slowly.

Altogether, while Russia’s labor crisis is becoming a structural constraint on the Kremlin’s wartime economy, domestic stability, and long-term geopolitical ambitions, its responses tend to exacerbate rather than resolve the problem.

In recent years, unemployment has remained at a record low of a little more than 2 percent, while estimates of the labor shortage (described by Bank of Russia chair Elvira Nabiullina as unprecedented in Russia’s modern history) have ranged from 1.5 million to 2.5 million workers. By 2030, Russia will need to bring 10.9 million people into the workforce, according to Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov, with more than 90 percent replacing retiring workers and roughly 800,000 filling newly created positions.

Read the full article in Foreign Policy.

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