Employment in Russian Households

Abstract

The paper discusses one of the most peculiar forms of non-standard employment in the Russian labor market - engagement in personal subsidiary agriculture. Using microdata from the Russian labor force surveys the author provides quantitative estimates of employment and hours worked in this sector. According to his findings accounting for subsistence farmers raises employment-population ratio in Russia by 10 percentage points and it turns out one of the highest in the world. Special attention is paid to description of social and demographic characteristics of persons involved in domestic agriculture. The dynamics of agricultural household production over the post-reform period is analyzed and its contribution to household consumption is estimated. The main conclusion is that for such highly industrialized and urbanized country as Russia the situation when at the peak of the agricultural season about half of its adult population works on personal subsidiary plots of lands is fairly surprising and serves as the evidence of huge waste of available labor resources.