Russian citizens fear no redundancies and are in general more inclined to be proactive and mobile on the labor market, found a new joint study by Yakov and Partners and Romir research holding titled “The New Russian Society: Consumer Pulse Survey”.
The survey was conducted in May 2024 using Romir’s proprietary Longitudinal System, a research tool which allows to analyze the evolution of public sentiments taking into account all the relevant criteria and segmentation by socio-demographic characteristics, lifestyle, values, and other criteria.
The results showed that the share of the respondents who had changed jobs or were looking to do so due to forced redundancies decreased fr om 4% in 2023 to 3% this year.
At the same time, only 4% of those surveyed expected to be made redundant next year, while 12% of the respondents planned to change jobs of their own volition.
"Judging by the answers to our question ‘Do you see yourself in your current position one year down the line?’, our respondents are more active and mobile on the labor market than citizens of other countries. In Russia, 39% of the respondents ticked off “No” or “Not sure” options, which is significantly more than the 28% average for such countries as the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and India. At the same time, only a small fraction of our respondents expect to be laid off. This means that our respondents are more actively looking into existing opportunities in the labor market,”
Elena Kuznetsova, director of the Yakov and Partners Research Institute and co-author of the report
Labor mobility is especially marked in such areas as tourism, recruitment, logistics, and banking, wh ere up to 43% of the respondents are ready to change jobs.
According to Inna Karaeva, executive director of Romir, the respondents cited higher salary (26%), work satisfaction (18%), and flexible working arrangements (15%) as the top three reasons for changing jobs.
"Unlike other generations, among Zoomers, training for a new job turned out to be the main reason for a job change (22%). A not so insignificant number of people would like to change jobs due to the opening of their own business or becoming an individual entrepreneur one year down the line. Such a wish was expressed by 6% of Generation Y respondents and 2% of senior respondents. The youngest generation does not seem ready to consider starting their own business”
Inna Karaeva, executive director of Romir
Only 45% of the respondents made a conscious effort to upgrade their professional skills over the past year. Russian citizens prefer to hone their competencies via online courses and trainings (35%) and on-the-job training (34%). High-income respondents turned out to be the only group of participants in which the majority (59%) invested time and effort into professional growth and development.
Interestingly, 51% of those who took pains to improve their skills also reported observing new opportunities in the labor market, while only 18% of those who made no such efforts noticed the emergence of such opportunities. The most frequently mentioned new opportunities were the possibility of remote work (44%) and availability of new professions and ways of earning money (37%).