Stuck Between Surplus and Shortage: Demand for Skills in the Russian Industry

In order to remain competitive, firms need to keep the quantity and composition of jobs close to the optimal for their given output. Since the beginning of the transition period, Russian industrial firms have been widely reporting that the quantity and composition of hired labor is far from being close to optimal. This paper discusses what kinds of firms in the Russian manufacturing sector are not able to optimize their employment and why. Do they suffer from a labor shortage induced by rapid growth, or are they still struggling with employment overhang? What are the occupations and skills in which there is a supposed surplus or shortage? What factors affect the probability that a firm will report non-optimal employment and be unable to solve this difficulty? Where is the labor excess/shortage concentrated and what makes it persistent? Finally, we discuss the costs of non-optimal employment. The analysis presented in this article is based on the data from a large-scale survey of Russian manufacturing firms.labour shortage, skills, training, transition economies, Russia

Are Public Sector Workers Underpaid in Russia? Estimating the Public-Private Wage Gap

The paper starts with discussing institutional framework for public sector wage setting in Russia. Given that individual choice of the sector is endogenous to wages, the authors recommend alternative econometric techniques for the public-private wage gap estimation. Applying switching regression that allows correcting for non-random sector selection, the paper provides wage gap estimates for various demographic, occupational, and territorial population subgroups. As it is shown, there is significant cross-group variation in the wage gap. The paper concludes that to eliminate the negative gap wages in the public sector should be linked to the private sector wages at the regional level.public sector

Employment Protection Legislation in Russia: Regional Enforcement and Labour Market Outcomes

Since formal laws can be observed or ignored to varying degrees, the actual enforcement regime shapes incentives and constraints. Most of the studies exploring EPL effects on labour market performance implicitly assume that EPL compliance is near to complete and therefore all firms bear full adjustment costs incurred by the regulations. This seems to be a very strong assumption for any country but it sounds especially strong and hardly plausible for developing and transition economies. But if compliance and enforcement varies widely across regions/cities or segments of firms, then this variation is likely to cause variation in performance. This paper looks at Russia in particular. The main idea of this paper is to analize cross-regional and inter-temporal variation in EPL enforcement and to explore empirically whether it is translated into regional labour market outcomes. The paper employs unique data set based on the State Labour Inspectorate data and the Supreme Court statistics on labour disputes.employment protection regulations, enforcement, employment, unemployment, regional labor markets, Russia

Decentralization of minimum wage setting in Russia: Causes and consequences

[Final remarks] Our findings suggest that the decentralization reform of the MW setting mechanism accelerated the growth of the wage floor for Russian workers and narrowed the variation in the minima between regions. At the same time, the coexistence of the federal and regional minimum wages has led to new imbalances. All these mean that the reform of the minimum wage setting mechanism in Russia cannot be considered final and further steps are required for better functioning of this institute

Are public sector workers underpaid in Russia? Estimating the public-private wage gap

The paper starts with discussing institutional framework for public sector wage setting in Russia. Given that individual choice of the sector is endogenous to wages, the authors recommend alternative econometric techniques for the public-private wage gap estimation. Applying switching regression that allows correcting for non-random sector selection, the paper provides wage gap estimates for various demographic, occupational, and territorial population subgroups. As it is shown, there is significant cross-group variation in the wage gap. The paper concludes that to eliminate the negative gap wages in the public sector should be linked to the private sector wages at the regional level

Employment protection legislation in Russia: regional enforcement and labour market outcomes

Since formal laws can be observed or ignored to varying degrees, the actual enforcement regime shapes incentives and constraints. Most of the studies exploring EPL effects on labour market performance implicitly assume that EPL compliance is near to complete and therefore all firms bear full adjustment costs incurred by the regulations. This seems to be a very strong assumption for any country but it sounds especially strong and hardly plausible for developing and transition economies. But if compliance and enforcement varies widely across regions/cities or segments of firms, then this variation is likely to cause variation in performance. This paper looks at Russia in particular. The main idea of this paper is to analize cross-regional and inter-temporal variation in EPL enforcement and to explore empirically whether it is translated into regional labour market outcomes. The paper employs unique data set based on the State Labour Inspectorate data and the Supreme Court statistics on labour disputes

Stuck between surplus and shortage: demand for skills in the Russian industry

In order to remain competitive, firms need to keep the quantity and composition of jobs close to the optimal for their given output. Since the beginning of the transition period, Russian industrial firms have been widely reporting that the quantity and composition of hired labor is far from being close to optimal. This paper discusses what kinds of firms in the Russian manufacturing sector are not able to optimize their employment and why. Do they suffer from a labor shortage induced by rapid growth, or are they still struggling with employment overhang? What are the occupations and skills in which there is a supposed surplus or shortage? What factors affect the probability that a firm will report non-optimal employment and be unable to solve this difficulty? Where is the labor excess/shortage concentrated and what makes it persistent? Finally, we discuss the costs of non-optimal employment. The analysis presented in this article is based on the data from a large-scale survey of Russian manufacturing firms

Transition to Postindustrial Society? A Study of the Service Sector Employment in Russia

The transition to market economic systems in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union involves fundamental shifts in the sectoral allocation of resources, in particular, dramatic changes in employment structures. Development of services in Russia turns to be more impressive than in many other transitional countries. This pa-per uses the Baumol-Fuchs model of the service sector expansion to estimate underdevelopment of services in Russia prior the transition and measure the progress in catching-up that has taken place thus far. Based on the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (1994-2000) empirical analysis demonstrates that sectoral variation in the difference between withdrawal from and entrance to the labor force is the main reason of changing distribution of labor. For job-to-job transitions low quality of current job matches, tenure effects and labor market segmentation are the most important explanation of intersectoral labor mobility.Russia, transition, labor mobility, sectoral restructuring, services

Wage Inequality in Russia (1994–2003)

The paper documents the changes in the size of the wage distribution in Russia over the period 1994–2003. Developments in wage inequality varied a lot by sub-periods: overall wage inequality stayed stable in 1994–1996, then it jumped following the 1998 crisis and remained at higher levels for three years. In 2002 the trend reversed again and in the course of a single year wage inequality fell back to the level of the mid-1990s. We find that evolution wage inequality was largely driven by changes in the upper end of the wage distribution. Decomposition of wage inequality by population sub-groups shows that inequality has been higher for men, younger and low-educated workers, and rural inhabitants. The structure of inequality did not change much over the period from 1994 to 2003. Demographic variables (mainly gender and region) explain the largest proportion of wage dispersion (over 40% of the explained variation and 15% of total variation). Nearly equivalent is the contribution of firm characteristics with industry affiliation of employer playing the leading role. Our results show that returns to education continued to rise at all percentiles of the wage distribution converging at the level of about 8–9% of wage increase for an additional year of schooling.Russia, wage inequality, decomposition, quantile regression