In the transition to a market economy, the Russian workforce underwent a wrenching period of change, with excess supply of some industrial skills coexisting with reports of skill shortages by many enterprises. This paper uses data from the Russia Investment Climate Survey (ICS) and related local...

To be competitive, firms have to maintain level and composition of workforce they consider optimal given utilized technology and expected output. The paper discusses what types of firms are unable to keep optimal employment, and why. Do firms still report excess of labor or do they face labor...

The efficiency of the labour market critically depends on the design of its institutions with employment protection legislation (EPL) playing a special role here. However, since formal laws can be observed or ignored to varying degrees, the actual enforcement regime shapes incentives and...

This paper discusses the structural change in the Russian employment and explores whether the evolution of employment over 2000–2012 followed the scenario of progressive upgrading in job quality or brought about the polarization of jobs in terms of their quality. Jobs are defined here as...