Employment in Russia: social stratification of labor market

Abstract

The answer on the question of Russia's readiness to the modem epoch of high technologies and informational production means the estimation of human resources quality. Among these qualities creative ability and personal attitude of actors are the most important, that N why the study of creative potential of Russians, their ability to work is quite actual now. I lie other important problem is the study of correlation between various segments of labor force market from the point of view of future economical and social development of Russia. In our research we tried to verify the idea of correspondence between the demands of modern labor market and some parameters of Russian workers. The hypothesis was that those demands and the major part of the parameters are in accordance. This thesis determined the logic of our analysis of employment structure at the time of transition from state-distribution system of labor resources to labor market and is the core of our presentation. The paper begins with the description of problem situation in employment. The information about the national economy's conditions, living standards, growth of social differentiation is given, three groups of problems are designated. The second part deals with methodology of research including the generalized information about the formalized interview, being representative towards adult population of Russia, which was undertaken within the survey. The other parts contain the analysis of basic characteristics of Russian population employment: 1) the method of professions' classification allowing to divide the forming labor market into professional segments; 2) the analysis of these forming professional segments; 3) age segmentation; 4) value standards, behavioral characteristics of Russians. Summarizing the article we can pay attention to the following: -The disproportion between the people's willingness to work in market's conditions and their real preparedness to such kind of activity is one of the basic hindrances for Russia's transition to market relations.- The analysis of our research's results displays the emergence of new labor market, though the old proportions among the main activity fields and professional groups still exist. The forming market demands for the higher quality set of professions and for the higher qualification level. For example the rate of employed in banking and finance is growing rapidly. The actions of enterprises' leaders in the process of staff reduction show the understanding of high qualified personnel's value.-  The scale of professional prestige evaluation is changing. The most prestigious persons are people of business and commerce. Researchers, cosmonauts, writers had occupied this position ten years before.-  The secondary employment, being the source of additional income, becomes the source of experience and allows the working people to enter non-state sector of economy. That determines peculiarities of secondary employment in Russia: it is more widely spread among qualified professions than among marginal strata. The secondary employment is usually the basis for establishing private business, the attempt to start it is successful in 40% of cases.-  People of various social groups differ in their ability to adopt to the demands of forming labor market. Some groups are nearly unfit for changing of their profession, retraining, getting more responsible jobs (for example, manual workers or qualified industrial workers). At the same time employees of research and technology fields, connected with high technologies, military industrial complex are afraid of the future unemployment. The tendency seems to spread over this type of workers, making a serious anxiety for the authors.-  Adaptivity to the labor market's demands is connected with the professional as well as with the age segmentation. The young people under the age of 23 are mostly interested in the active state policy in employment field. At the same time such policy is unfavorable to young people in present situation.-  The role of personal qualities, especially value orientations, is rapidly growing. In the more stable period they could have been screened by the performed social roles. Those who are oriented to the work as a value and has a creative approach to it. do suffer less of the reforms. Even more than that, namely this group of people is benefited by the reforms.