Almost 2.5k idle employees: how sanctions affecting labour market in Kazan

“There is no trend of unemployment growth in Kazan”

Timur Mullin, the director of the Kazan Employment Centre, told on Business Monday at the city hall that despite the current economic situation, “which arose as a result of sanctions pressure and the withdrawal of foreign businesses from Russia”, the situation in the labour market of the capital of Tatarstan “remains stable” in the first half of the year. The number of the workforce is 643 thousand people, which is by 2,100 more than in 2021.

“There is no trend of unemployment growth in Kazan. At the end of the first half of the year, the registered unemployment rate was 0,64% of the workforce, which is an order of magnitude lower than last year (then it was 1,53% — editor's note)," Timur Mullin assured.

Compared to the same period last year, the number of unemployed in Kazan has decreased by 2,4 times. 4,300 people from among the applicants were employed — this is 50%, the head of the Kazan Employment Centre noted in his report.

Most of the citizens were employed in such industries as transport, trade, industry, healthcare and construction.

One cannot say firmly that “the labour has market has returned to its shores”

At the same time, since the beginning of 2022, there has been a decrease in the number of vacancies in the city, albeit “insignificant”. At the moment, 19,100 vacancies are available in Kazan, whereas a year ago there were 20,5 thousand of them. The labour market in construction suffered the most — the number of vacancies there decreased by 18% over the year. In trade — by 6%, manufacturing — by 14%, hotel business — by 13%.

The decline, however, is affecting more administrative staff, they assure in the Kazan Employment Centre. 264 employers plan to lay off 500 people, 2,400 more employees are idle, 1,400 employees are employed part-time.

“The downtime occurred due to the disruption of logistics chains, which led to a disruption in the supply of raw materials and finished products, as well as due to a change of ownership due to the withdrawal of foreign businesses. Enterprises are forced to rebuild their work in the new economic conditions. But a number of organisations that have announced downtime are planning to rebrand — therefore, jobs are saved for employees," Mullin said.

He also assured that even the lay-offs will not lead to an increase in unemployment — due to the diversification of the Kazan economy: labour resources in theory can be redistributed from one industry to another. At the same time, the head of the Executive Committee of Kazan, Rustem Gafarov, noted, it is impossible to say firmly that “the labour market has returned to its shores”, since foreign companies are still curtailing their activities, mostly in trade.

Since the beginning of the year, almost 9 thousand people have applied to the Employment Centre in search of a suitable job, which is by 4 thousand less than in the first half of 2021 (then 13,144 citizens have applied since the beginning of the year). More than half of them are aged 30-54 years. Only 26% of job seekers are aged 14 to 29. 4,101 people remained unemployed by July 1, 2022. For comparison, as of January 1, 2021, 17 thousand unemployed people were registered in Kazan, and by July 1, 2021, the indicator decreased to 9,8 thousand.