VTB CEO Andrei Kostin believes that Russia is facing a catastrophic shortage of labor and therefore needs migrants. He made this statement during the plenary session of the IX International Forum of the Financial University, titled "New Economic Policy 2.0: From Adaptation to Breakthrough," according to ntv.ru.
Kostin emphasized that the shortage of labor limits Russia's economic development, calling it "catastrophic."
“By the way, we've been pretty harsh on immigrants. Guys, but without immigrants, our economy will not breathe today; we still need to address this issue. Of course, it's easy to expel them, but who will do the work?” the banker lamented.
Kostin also mentioned that the United Shipbuilding Corporation, which is managed by VTB, is experiencing a shortage of workers in various professions, with a gap of 10% to 20%.
Earlier, the auditing and consulting network FinExpertiza reported that Russia is facing a record labor shortage, according to Stoletiye online newspaper.
By the end of September, the number of job advertisements compared to the number of unemployed Russians was 5 to 1. The greatest labor shortage was observed in the Amur region, with 29 job vacancies for every unemployed person. In the Leningrad region, there were 25 vacancies for every unemployed person, in Nizhny Novgorod — 22, in Tula — 20, and in Oryol — 13 vacancies for every unemployed individual.
In Krasnodar Krai, there was a need for 80,700 more workers than there were jobseekers, and in Moscow, the gap was 79,700. However, in Ingushetia, there was only 0.01 vacancy per jobseeker, in Chechnya — 0.1, and in Tuva and Dagestan — 0.5 vacancies per unemployed person.
At the end of September, Russian employers were short of 2 million workers.
392,000 people applied to employment services, which means jobseekers could only fill one-fifth of the deficit. This was the lowest ratio recorded since 2005. The shortage of workers began to grow in 2022 and reached 2.4 vacancies for every jobseeker, with the need for new employees increasing by another 6% in 2023.
