Thread by @slantchev

The collapse of the Russian labor market. 🧵

According to official statistics (tass.ru/ekonomika/1749…), the number of workers between the ages of 19 and 35 has decreased by 1.34 million in 2022, the largest such decline since the fall of the USSR. 1/7

Russia experienced a "demographic hole" during the crisis years with especially pronounced collapse of number of births between 1993 and 2006. So this would account for some of the "missing" workers & this is how the statistics have been explained in official releases. But... 2/7

Let's take a closer look at the age cohorts at the start of 2022. The 30-34 group is the second largest in the population (so not in the "hole"), and yet somehow the number of workers in that group declined by 524K. Where did they go? 3/7

Then there's the 25-29 group, which is indeed part of the "hole" and has about 8M in it. The 724K missing are about 9%. The next, even smaller cohort, is the 20-24 group with about 6.8M in it, whose 87K missing are about 1%. Why the different rates? 4/7

The likely culprits are emigration and mobilization. The 25-29 group is the one that has acquired marketable skills and probably has more means to leave than the younger ones, not to mention that it is also more likely to be mobilized. 5/7

Moreover, they are less likely to have families than the older group (524K missing, about 4.5% of 11.9M). This, admittedly cursory, look at the data suggests that that Russia is being hit with the perfect storm of population outflow, demographics, & war-related missingness. 6/7

Too many people are fleeing the country or being sent to the front, & they are precisely in the age groups that are likely to have modern skills that Russia desperately needs. No replacements are coming b/c of demographic hole either. It's going to get much, much worse. 7/7