Putin Doubled The Overtime Limit For Russians
1- 25.05.2026, 23:32
- 1,056
To close the manpower gap.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a law doubling the overtime standard for Russians to cover the labor shortage in the economy, which has engulfed areas from factories to prisons.
In place of the limit of 120 overtime hours per year set back in the Soviet Union's Labor Code, which has been in effect in Russia for more than 50 years, the new standard will be 240 hours. In addition, the law abolishes the ban on recall from vacation workers harmful and hazardous industries.
"Expansion of overtime work opportunities will level the need to create 48.8 thousand additional jobs", will also increase the competitiveness of Russian companies in the global market, according to the explanatory note to the law. According to the document, 90% of Russians are ready to work overtime, including 28% - for the sake of additional income.
The bill was initiated by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, which predicts that by the end of the decade, the shortage of staff in the country will reach 3 million people. Now, according to estimates by Bloomberg Economics, Russia is short of 1.5 million workers, which is comparable to the population of cities such as Yekaterinburg or Novosibirsk.
Even before the war, in 2015-22, the working-age population shrank by 4.9 million people, according to Bloomberg calculations. The invasion of Ukraine brought the economy mobilization of 300,000 people, contract recruitment of more than 1 million more, and mass emigration. The latter has reduced the labor force by 300,000-400,000 people, and the number of labor migrants has also decreased by about 1 million people, according to demographer Igor Efremov.
FinExpertiza estimates that the current talent pool of the economy - that is, people who are employed but could potentially work - is 4.4 million people. Compared to 2021, it has shrunk by 40%.
To cover the shortage of workers, billionaire Oleg Deripaska and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Onishchenko have suggested bringing back the 6-day work week, as in Stalin's USSR. And Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov has called for the use of the labor of pensioners, of whom there are more than 40 million.
But one way or another, the shortage of personnel will persist for a long time, Efremov believes: Russia's population will continue to age following the decline in the birth rate, which is breaking anti-records in the country's modern history.
The current state of the labor market is "not a crisis, but a new norm for decades," Efremov notes.
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