Demand and Supply of Skilled Labor in Russia: Who Ran Faster? Part I

Abstract

The paper examines the dynamics in demand and supply of skilled labor in the Russian economy over the transition period of 1990–2000s. It shows that despite a huge inflow of workers with tertiary education demand for such workers grew in the Russian labor market even faster. This explains why unemployment for workers with high educational attainment remained low; why returns to education continued to be high; why a proportion of college graduates who occupied low-skilled jobs decreased rather than increased. However in the next decades the correlation between demand and supply might radically change so that the Russian economy could face massive oversupply of highly educated workforce.