Informal Unemployment in Russia: New Tendency of Development in XXI Century
The article is devoted to the reasons for the preservation and new trends in the development of informal employment in Russia at the beginning of the XXI century. The focus is on the wealth of shades of informal employment that exists in modern Russian society: from self-reliance and reimbursable family work to formal (unpaid or not fully paid) employment. The relationship between formal and informal economic activity in postSoviet societies is studied in detail. If in the last decade of last century and the first decade of the current informal employment, as a rule, combined with the formal, now an increasing number of Russians are employed only in the informal sphere. The work of non-formals is becoming more and more qualified, the level of education and vocational training is growing. If in the formal sector there are no significant gender differences, then in the informal sector in recent years there has been a tendency for male labor to dominate. Informal employment continues to play an important role in the initial and final stages of the reproduction chain in areas such as agriculture, construction and trade, because in these areas it is easiest to hide the true scale of production, as well as various unformalized labor relations. The article discusses the relationship of formal and informal employment by stages of the economic cycle, shows the interdependence and interdependence of these types of employment, since the scale of informal employment largely depends on the income level of people employed in the formal sphere. Reducing these incomes has a cyclical effect on informal employment. In the conditions of an underdeveloped service sector, the growth of incomes of the population leads to an increase in the volume of informal employment and, conversely, their reduction leads to a decrease in the scale of informal employment.