Stuck between Surplus and Shortage: Demand for Skills in Russian Industry

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. 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. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S

Impact of Wages on Employment and Migration in the High North of Russia

“…In contrast, the reaction of labour demand is moderate or at least not so flexible. The lack of flexibility of Russian employers (companies) in the hiring and firing process was also empirically proven by Gimpelson et al (2010). Some control variables also appeared to be significant.…”

Employer‐provided training, innovation and skills in post‐Soviet countries

“…Almeida and Aterido (2015) added that important differences between smaller and larger firms in terms of their ability to invest in technology and integrate into global markets might also explain why smaller firms have lower incidence of training in developing countries. Gimpelson et al (2010) argued that larger manufacturing firms in Russia resorted to a training option as they were often prone to labour hoarding as firing of redundant workers was constrained by strict employment protection legislation. We would like to add our explanation which is relevant in the context of post-Soviet countries: many large, longstanding firms, which were predominantly state-owned or being privatized during the 1990-2000s, inherited a well-developed system of employee hiring workers from external markets: 1) filling a vacancy for a worker of a given occupation took 30 days or more; 2) labour supply is a serious obstacle to growth.…”

“…Studies using firm-level data (includingGimpelson, 2010;Gimpelson et al, 2010;Lazareva et al, 2006) are focused predominantly on manufacturing firms. A recent descriptive study byAvraamova et al (2016) is based on a survey of HR managers of enterprises and organizations in priority sectors (ICT, energy and transport systems) in Moscow and two oblasts in Russia Berger et al (2001).…”

Occupational propensity for training in a late industrial society: evidence from Russia

“…There is a vast literature on both the economic and social factors that relate to training. The dominant strand in the literature belongs to those labour economists who mostly pay attention to economic factors, such as unemployment (Berger et al ., ; Sabirianova, ), tenure, work experience, position in the wage distribution and educational attainments (Arulampalam et al ., ; Booth & Bryan, ; Nikolai & Ebner, ), labour market institutions (Gimpelson et al ., ), industrial and sectoral differences (Lazareva, ; Lazareva et al ., ; Méndez & Sepúlveda, ), local density of firms (Brunello & Gambarotto, ; Rzepka & Tamm, ) and organization‐specific determinants, such as ownership, etc. (Booth & Bryan, ; Hansson, ; Parker & Coleman, ; Travkin & Sharunina, ).…”