The figure of 40 thousand people looks quite adequate
Recently, Russian gas and oil companies have been experiencing a serious labor shortage. The situation is related to the demographic crisis of the 1990s, as well as high salary competition from the armed forces and the military-industrial complex. Today, the sector lacks about 40 thousand employees, reports Bloomberg. We asked experts how this corresponds to the real state of affairs.
Personnel shortages in the primary industries are observed both among qualified personnel and among ordinary workers. According to data from Kasatkin Consulting (the former Russian branch of Deloitte), which Bloomberg refers to in its article, in January-February the average wages in the Russian oil industry amounted to approximately 125 thousand rubles. Although this is noticeably higher than the national average, even such salaries are outcompeted by contracts with the Ministry of Defense.
Bloomberg also writes that some enterprises have introduced payments to workers for the referred employee. Staff are offered hot lunches, medical examinations and corporate holidays, people of pre-retirement age – “work as long as possible.” Despite all the measures, the problem of labor shortage continues to worsen. It is also not yet possible to solve it by attracting foreign specialists, since the weakening of the ruble and international sanctions have made Russia less attractive for migrants from neighboring countries.
“It’s difficult to say what the true scale of the personnel shortage in the Russian oil and gas sector is, expressed in specific figures,” says Igor Yushkov, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. – In itself, it is extremely segmented: there is direct extraction of raw materials, processing, and sales. And the construction of fuel and energy facilities, in which a huge number of migrants are involved, also, in fact, belongs to the industry. But there really is a problem. There is a shortage not so much of highly qualified specialists, managers, and executives as of workers in lower positions. Salary competition with the Ministry of Defense arose primarily in the mass segment – where people are paid noticeably less than the 200-250 thousand rubles that military personnel and personnel of manufacturing enterprises of the military-industrial complex receive.
Of course, the factor of demographic aging also plays a role. But even more important, Yushkov argues, is that young people in Russia ignore technical professions, due to their supposedly low prestige, preferring financial or law universities. This problem, which has been created for decades, has now become fully evident.
“Indeed, the oil and gas industry has been experiencing personnel difficulties for some time,” agrees Artem Deev, head of the analytical department at AMarkets. — The events of the last two years clearly did not benefit it: in 2023, the index of the supply of Russian industrial enterprises with specialists reached -30.5 points – absolute minimum since the beginning of research. If in 2022 the oil and gas sector opened more than 11 thousand vacancies, then a year later the personnel shortage was already about 27.5 thousand people. Accordingly, the figure of 40 thousand announced by Kasatkin Consulting may well be close to the truth. If it is overestimated, it is not significant.”