OREANDA-NEWS Over the past year, the scale of the shortage of labor resources in the Russian market has significantly decreased. This was stated by Ekaterina Spodina, head of the analytical department of the Apright consulting company. Her words are quoted by TASS.

In 2024, she recalled, the shortage of workers in the country was estimated at about 3.58 million people. Currently, companies and enterprises lack 1.98 million qualified personnel. Thus, the figure decreased by 1.6 million over the year.

Spodina expects that similar dynamics will continue in the Russian labor market in the second half of 2025. In September-December, according to the analyst's forecast, there will continue to be a decrease in personnel tension. However, next year the trend will change and the need for qualified workers will start to grow again. "The competition for the workforce will continue," the analyst concluded.

Earlier, the head of the Central Bank (CB), Elvira Nabiullina, repeatedly stated about the problem of personnel shortage. This problem has affected most of the key sectors of the Russian economy. In the first half of September 2025, there was still a tense situation on the Russian labor market. The lack of qualified workers, the head of the regulator emphasized, makes it difficult to correct the imbalance of supply and demand. This factor affects, among other things, annual inflation, which is still more than twice the target of 4 percent. Against this background, the Board of Directors of the Bank of Russia did not lower the key rate to 16 percent, as businessmen and industrialists insisted, but limited itself to reducing the bar to 17 percent.