Russia / Changing jobs more frequently than other Europeans

Russians change work more frequently than their European counterparts. According to Rosstat (Russia’s Federal Statistics Service), over 11 percent of the working population remains employed at a primary place of employment for less than a year only; for 700,000 employees, this period lasts less than a month. Experts interviewed by RBTH differ in their opinions on whether this trend is favorable for the economy or not.

There is one advantage mentioned by experts: people are gradually getting rid of the wide-spread Soviet stereotype that “it is bad to change work frequently.” It was tradition in the Soviet Union to label people who were too particular about their workplace as “job-hoppers.” Such employees were subject to public condemnation and became subjects of caricatures; and the Communist Party, of course, tried to complicate their lives.

“Russia is a country with a rather traditionalist lifestyle, and if a tendency is established it will last long. In general, it is not bad that Russians started to gradually get rid of the Soviet stereotypes and choose the work they like, and not the one imposed by the Party, government or any other authorities,” said sociologist Zakhar Gotovtsev.

Experts find other positive factors in the labor mobility trend. Nikita Maslennikov, advisor for the Institute of Contemporary Development, links high labor mobility to the economic shift toward innovation technologies.

“People try to change physically hard, standardized and underpaid work to more qualified intellectual labor, and this stimulates the development of industries creating higher value-added products,” Maslennikov said…

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