MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th June, 2020) One-quarter of Russia's unemployed population lost their jobs during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov said on Monday.
"Forty-seven percent of those registered as unemployed have not worked for a long time or have never been employed, 33 percent are those who lost their jobs before the pandemic, and 25 percent lost their jobs during the pandemic," Kotyakov said during a government meeting.
The minister also provided details of the industries that have the largest amount of labor openings at this present time, based on a study of the Russian government's Work in Russia portal.
Kotyakov said that across all of Russia, there are 406,000 vacancies in the manufacturing sector, with roughly 140,000 people currently applying for jobs in this sphere. The construction and health care sectors are the two other industries with the largest number of openings with 150,000 and 110,000 vacancies, respectively, the minister said.
During the same meeting, Economic Development Minister Maksim Reshetnikov said that the rate of unemployment should return to its 2019 level by 2021, as a result of the government's efforts to stabilize the labor market.
"Based on all the measures, I am sure that we will fulfill the task the president set and in 2021, we will return to the level of employment seen in 2019," Reshetnikov said.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian government has offered multiple stimulus packages to help companies of all sizes retain workers throughout the ongoing economic crisis.
On June 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that unemployment in the country has risen to six percent amid the current health crisis, although he added that this increase was not as dramatic as seen in other countries.
