UK Defence Intelligence has revealed that Russia is almost certainly facing its worst labour shortage in decades.
According to a survey conducted by the Russian Central Bank involving 14,000 employers, the number of available employees has reached its lowest level since 1998.
The report further indicates that, over the last three years, Russia’s population has reportedly decreased by two million more people than expected. This decline has been attributed to the impacts of COVID-19 and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 7 May 2023.
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/RwUoR1noSV
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/dpkV4CyZVP
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) May 7, 2023
In 2022 alone, Russia saw up to 1.3 million people leave the country, many of whom were younger and well-educated individuals in high-value industries. The Russian Ministry of Communications revealed that “about 10% (100,000) of the IT workforce left the country in 2022 and did not return”.
The labour shortage, caused by a combination of mobilisation, historically high emigration, and an ageing and shrinking population, poses a significant threat to the Russian economy.
Experts predict that this situation will likely lead to a reduction in the potential growth of the Russian economy and risks stoking inflation.
Maybe the Russians should appeal to all its supporters and socialists living in the U.K. to do the right thing and relocate for a better life in Mother Russia. What I can’t understand is how so few have done so. It’s as if they are all talk and no trousers.
They are already calling for that on Russian state TV however they don’t want any “socialists”. 😀
Agreed, I’m sure the clowns in “young Labour” who bump their gums so often without knowing real life, will be the first to volunteer to go to mother Russia……
Has JohninMagnetogorsk done the decent thing you you think?
What? Join up as a member of the low level tank turret display team? No way, he is a coward troll and likes to pontificate from the sidelines!
Socialism isn’t communism
Cheeks of the same arse! Next?
Well said.👏👏
Moronic right trash tropes lmao
Talking of shortages Moscow fielded its May Day parade and instead of hundreds of tanks filing past the podium, they had 1 T34 and no fly past.
I’ve seen more modern equipment on episodes of ‘Heartbeat.’
Oh dear, that T34 on hearing it was been sent to the Ukraine decided to play dead
Less Orcs to worry about then, actually on current trends the UK will be the biggest country and economy in Europe by the end of the 2040’s. Germany and Russia are really ****ed.
Since the Tory’s have really opened up Imigration to places like India and Nigeria the country’s population is really flying. Last year nearly 200,000 permits were issued just to India and Nigeria and India wants even more for a free trade agreement.
Got to love Brexit
Trouble with Indian goods is that the level of faking is unbelievable.
As one senior Indian politician one said to me ‘nothing is as it appears to be: nothing’
The issue for us is that our light touch trust based regulations with be cynically and aggressively abused.
That is exactly what happened with Indian cough medicine these past few months resulting in the deaths of 18 children in Uzbekistan, 70 in Gambia and over 100 in Indonesia
FFS. UK population will go upto 100 million+ . Whilst we will still only have the infrastructure and public services for a 30 million population.
Where is the Tory grand plan for managing growth and developing national infrastructure? There isn’t one.
Where are the extra GPs, pharmacies, schools, hospitals, police stations, ambulance stations, fire stations, train lines and stations, new road routes, charging points for EVs, power stations, water reservoirs (none new since 1992), the list goes on.
If we are having an imported population boom there needs to be a proportional uplift in all of the above.
This is why I’m against unlimited mass immigration. Illegal migration just makes it worse, and an ageing population.
Don’t forget the environmental impact, building on the green belt, and issues with integration if they form their own communities and do not integrate.
But hey, whenever the likes of me show our concerns we’re “racist” according to all the useful idiots from the SWP, Greens, Labour, Lib Dems, and all their cheerleaders in the media.
Funny that.
Who would ever have thought that if you conscript all the young men to be killed in the battlefield in an ego driven war and that as a result most men of conscriptable age flee you you have a labour shortage….amazing….
Yep, what’s next, full ‘North Korea’, with a heavily armed boarder and all the weapons pointing backwards?
China is going to have two nut job republics to wet nurse at this rate, as Russia descends into increasingly paranoid authoritarianism ….
Chinas going the same way though, their demographics ar even worse than Russia’s, atleast Russia gets large scale migration from the central Asian countries but China gets nothing.
All three countries are reverting back to their post 90’s authoritarian ways. Good thing this time is they are not occupying anyone else, let’s just hope they build the wall high enough.
I suppose the real difference between the three is that China isn’t stupid ( it won’t cut it’s nose off to spite its face) and it writes the cheques for the other two.
Russia will increasingly become reliant on China, that ‘might’ be a good thing, with a reasonably sensible Chinese Politburo pulling the Kremlin strings…..
China has already accepted, well over a decade ago, that it is about as rich as it’ll ever be. As such, Chairman Xi is pressing on with the Communist manifesto. My worry is that any dependent state, like Russia, will be expected to conform and we might see the evolution of a USSR v2.0 with China calling the shots.
And since China and Russia are both demographically screwed it could make them more desperate to achieve their geo-political goals in the nearer term.
Problem is that Chinese debt is spiralling, and that’s just what’s know about. A lot of the regional administrations have ‘off the books’ debt piling up. Those cheques may start to bounce…
I think Xi is schizophrenic on this one.
On the one hand he is loving that Russia is turning itself into a vassal safe.
On the other hand he is dreading the civil war that he will probably have to sort out between potentially nuclear armed factions.
Putin is broken and the Russian army feels quite close to collapse to me if my sixth sense tells me anything. Which is not good as there will be huge numbers of armed annoyed men in Russia who don’t like the army or Putin or any of his kleptocratic mates very much.
I have a funny feeling it will all be over by autumn.
You might be right, Russia is locked into the Ukraine war.
It can’t win, it can’t withdraw without potential regime collapse ….
Negotiated settlement is looking highly unlikely, why would Ukraine come to the table?
I would say collapse of the Russian administration and a civil war between the power grabbers is certainly a possibility, a rather terrifying one at that!
I think it’s only his fierce loyalty to Putin that has saved Yevgeny Prigozhin from being permanently silenced by the Russian military so far. Putin has established deep links with strong men who have their own power bases outside formal government structures. Ramzan Kadyrov is another good example, and of course Putin has historical links from his St Petersburg days with the Bratva (Russian Mafia).
If parts of the Russian state did move against Putin, then Putin has a lot of unorthodox forces to call to his aid in addition to any loyal military/ paramilitary forces: the FSB would back Putin as he’s one of their own.
It’s likely to descend into the bloody chaos that was feared but failed to happen when the USSR collapsed.
Listening to Putin’s speech today, and his reminiscence of WW2 when American and Britain armies fought as allies, I wondered if this might be the first hint or signal that he knows he’s in trouble and is look for a face-saving get-out. If so, he’s failed to have grasped that any chance of that is long gone.
The issue is that Russians are not excited by democracy – well they were – then they got Yeltsin! Most Russians were ashamed of what the country became.
They were begging, by the end of Yektsinism, for a (can’t believe in going to type this) Hitler strongman – which is what they actually got.
That’s why we won’t see a popular uprising in Russian against Putin, it’ll be different power factions fighting for control of what’s left.
To be fair to the Russians, they were duped. The FSB staged all those apartment terrorist attacks to terrify the public into demanding action against the Chechens. Putin got the war he needed to ‘save the people’ from the Chechen terrorists, and that bumped up to being Yeltsin’s anointed successor. He even fooled Yeltsin, who only realised his mistake when Putin stopped returning his calls as soon as he became President.
Total shocker.
I think Russia is now on a slippery slope, with China courting the “Stans” (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan) who see Russia getting weaker so are looking to China for investment in there fledgling economy’s also China’s eye is firmly fixed on “how to get more resources” to support its industries from oil and gas to gold, diamonds and hard woods. China look on with envious eyes at Siberia which still has vast amounts of untapped reserves of all the above. I do not think it is looking good for Putin or Russia as the longer this war goes on and the weaker Russia gets (or perceived to get) the more likely it will be that Russia will either start to split up or China will start to feed on its dying carcase.
I saw a newspaper article shortly after the start of the war, sorry, special military operation, which postulated that one reason for the war was to bring another 40m+ people back into the Russian orbit, to compensate for the declining population. Then they had about 140m in Russia and that number was dropping at about 1m pa. It’s obviously accelerating now, for all the reasons already stated.
And interestingly China has the same problem. Their birth rate has been dropping for some time as a result of the one child policy, and the population is projected to more than halve to under 680m by the end of this century. If they are going to have a go at getting control of Siberia it might happen sooner than we think.
I totally agree that what you have stated gives a momentum all of its own for change
The Chinese don’t need to carve up Russia militarily to get their hands on Siberian resources. They can simply do the same tactic they’ve been employing around the world – offer a huge amount of cash to keep Putin going, with the Siberian resources as collateral in case Russia has trouble with the repayments. The Chinese will structure it so the loan repayments become onerous and Russia has to concede the resources rather than default on its debts.
Objective achieved.
Exactly
It would make my day if Russia has weakened itself fighting an unjustified war of failed conquest only to then lose vast tracts of territories to a Chinese war of conquest in Siberia.
There is a certain irony in that.
I think countries like Kazakhstan supported by China will have a big influence over Siberia who’s population is being used as cannon fodder by Putin. What ever happens in the next few years is going to have vast consequences not just for Russia but for the rest of the world.
Just a polite reminder that the UK is also facing a skilled workforce shortage, especially civil, mechanical and electrical engineering along with medical care, soon it’ll increase as the old aged crop retire and others poached by other countries.
Add to that the lowering of standards for entrants and the devestation of apprenticeships in the last 2 decades, we’re not in a particularly good spot either.
Mike wrote:
The Uks problem is since degrees became a cash cow for the universities , young adults have migrated towards the arts rather than the sciences , this was followed by how at a stroke Artisan trades became scarce which is why tradesmen now command rock star wages, with the gaps filled by Eastern Europeans (nothing wrong with that my kitchen was rebuilt by a Slovakian) and jobs worths . It is also why the Uk over the past 10 to 20 years has seen a rise in left of the political spectrum as people who follow the arts tend to subscribe more to socialist values (again nothing wrong with that) than they do the right.
The problem for Russia, is due to Moscow diverting everything onto a war footing men, industry etc, it is diverting raw materials away from a productive society , things arent helped by the hundreds of thousands who have said “Sod this for a game of soldiers” and legged it and the icing on the cake is the huge hit Russia has suffered due to sanctions, yes Moscow may have stockpiled stuff as well as sourse vital equipment through the black market, but the fact remains the sands of time are running out for Moscow and be it manpower, consumer goods or even a all singing and all dancing Zil car, Moscow is going to feel the economic effects of its stupid war with the Ukraine for a long time to come.
Russians are voting with their feet and leaving before they are sent off to fight in Putin’s meat grinder.
It’s a sad fact Russian lives are measured by Putin and his cronies only on the value of the ammunition used to kill them.