Labor Hoarding In Russia: Where Does It Come From?

Rouslan Koumakhov (1) , Boris Najman (2, 3)

1 FORUM - Fondements des organisations et des régulations de l'univers marchand
2 ROSES - Réformes et Ouverture des Systèmes Economiques post-Socialistes
3 GRATICE - EA3488 Groupe de recherche et d'analyse des théories, institutions et conventions économiques

The paper focuses on the labor "hoarding" problem in Russian. We studied two forms of "hoarding": unpaid leaves and short-time work. Our research is based on the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) database. The paper exploits individual panel data between 1994 and 1996. We show that unpaid leaves and short-time work do not represent a form of hidden unemployment. Both types of labor "hoarding" reflect the nature of employees' professional competencies. First, unpaid leaves concern primarily the employees with firm-specific knowledge, while short-time work affects strongly unskilled workers. Second, external mobility is mostly related to young people and unskilled blue-collar workers while employees with specific competencies do not change jobs so much. The paper insists on significant internal adjustments which are taking place through unpaid leaves and short-time work. This explains why there has been no massive unemployment in Russia until now. In conclusion, Russian labor market is characterized rather by internal flexibility than by labor "hoarding".

Mots clés: skills; labor market; internal adjustments; flexibility; Russia; skills.

Domaines: Economies et finances

Rouslan Koumakhov, Boris Najman. Labor Hoarding In Russia: Where Does It Come From?. Econometric Society world congress, Aug 2000, Seattle, United States. ⟨hal-00270953⟩