DEMOGRAPHY
FOREIGN WORKERS IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA
SOURCE. Rossiia-2000. Sotsial'no-demograficheskaia situatsiia [Russia-2000: The Socio-Demographic Situation]. Moscow: Izd-vo Instituta sotsial'no- ekonomicheskikh problem narodonaseleniia [Publishing House of the Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of Population], 2001, pp. 118-130.
In 2000, officially registered foreign workers in Russia numbered 146,000 or 0.4 per cent of the total workforce. In addition, there are an unknown number of foreign workers in Russia illegally.
Why should foreigners be working in Russia at all when so many Russians are unemployed?
In part, it is a continuation of patterns established in the Soviet period, such as the employment of Ukrainians in the oil and gas fields of the Tyumen region (West Siberia). In part, it is due to the low mobility and adaptability of the Russian workforce. There are certain unskilled jobs that few Russians are willing to take, at least for the wages on offer. That is why in January 2000 Russian labor exchanges had as many as 600,000 vacancies on their books. But many people from countries where conditions are even worse than in Russia are prepared to take these jobs.
According to official figures, about half of foreign workers are from the "near abroad" (other countries of the former Soviet Union) and about half from the "far abroad." As these figures do not include illegal workers, most of whom are believed to be from other post-Soviet states, the real proportion who come from the near abroad must be well over half.
The single largest exporter of labor to Russia is Ukraine, accounting for 30 per cent of legal workers and an even higher share of illegal workers. (A Ukrainian building worker can earn at least 7 times more in Moscow than he can at home, a Ukrainian driver at least 3 times more.) A further 15 per cent of legal workers are from Moldova, the Southern Caucasus, Uzbekistan or Tajikistan. The main areas of origin outside the former USSR are China, North Korea, Vietnam, and also Turkey and the Balkans.
Over a third of legal foreign workers go to the Moscow region, where they work mainly in construction and transportation. The other two main reception areas are Western Siberia and the Far East. Workers from a given country tend to go to the same parts of Russia. Thus Vietnamese go to the Maritime Territory (Far East), Moscow, and Astrakhan Province; Bulgarians go to the Urals and the Tyumen region; and so on. This is largely the result of recruitment of workers in groups through contracts between foreign governments and Russian construction, agricultural, and forestry enterprises.
In the early 1990s the number of legal foreign workers increased, peaking in 1996 at 292,000 -- that is, double the 2000 level though still under 1 per cent of the total workforce. Numbers declined in the late 1990s, as cash-strapped Russian enterprises that had employed foreign workers no longer found it profitable to do so. For example, the coal mines of Rostov Province no longer needed workers from neighboring Ukraine when coal output fell. However, part of the decline in legal labor migration is thought to reflect a redirection of the flow of foreign labor into illegal channels.
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