Foreign labour force influence on the regional labor market
It is common knowledge that the free movement of goods, labour and capital is a fundamental principle of the present-day market economy. In this context, the situation in border regions of the Russian Federation is far from being ideal. The migration authorities and business circles pay an insufficient attention to the regulation of local labour markets which has a negative impact on the competitive strength of the regional economy. The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the existing opportunities for the attraction of a foreign workforce to the regional labour markets in order to facilitate the solution of the local economic problems. The labour imbalances in the Amur Region, which are caused by multi-year outflows of local population, along with steadily declining labour resources, appear to be very threatening for the development of the regional economy. The growing presence of foreign workers in the Amur Region may lead to a three-fold decrease in economic participation among the local population. The regulation of migration flows and refusal to use the Chinese labour resources will not reduce significantly the number of the Chinese workers as a percentage of the total headcount of migrants. The labour market in the Amur Region is characterized by a lower intensity as compared to the other parts of the Russian Federation. The labour market in the Amur Region does not have a significant influence on the local economic structure. The problem of structural unemployment can be solved through the implementation of large-scale investment projects, such as the construction of a cascade of hydroelectric power stations on the Bureya River, a local oil refinery plant and the Vostochny spaceport.