Russia’s labor scarcity spreads as protection sector poaches workers

MOSCOW –
“Bus quantity seven was not working this morning,” Olga Slatina wrote on social media from the Sverdlovsk area in Russia’s Ural Mountains. “The dispatcher stated it would not be there as there was nobody to work.”

Slatina’s bus driver within the metropolis of Kamensk-Uralsky could have merely referred to as in sick on that day in late October. But a rising labor scarcity is affecting all areas of life since Moscow despatched troops into Ukraine in February 2022, firms, employees, recruitment businesses and officers say.

Heavy recruitment by the armed forces and protection industries has drawn employees away from civilian enterprises, as has emigration, pushing unemployment to a file low of two.3%, knowledge from the Rosstat statistics service confirmed on Wednesday.