Russian military factories have hired 520,000 new workers, but are still short 160,000 – 2024-06-10 08:09:47

The shortage of workers in Russian military plants has reached 160 thousand people, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov announced.

According to him, in less than a year and a half, enterprises producing weapons for the Russian army have already attracted 520 thousand workers, but the need for personnel still remains.

“The trend of the last year and a half is a strong flow of civilian industries to enterprises of the military-industrial complex. It is clear that this phenomenon may be temporary. But we cannot predict exactly how temporary this phenomenon is,” Manturov told the International Economic forum in St. Petersburg, quoted by The Moscow Times.

Earlier, the Deputy Prime Minister noted that the Russian military-industrial complex has become “the most powerful in the world” in terms of production volumes of basic types of weapons and military equipment. At the same time, the salaries of military plant employees have increased in various areas by 30–60% in the last two years, while overall growth in manufacturing was 20%.

Russian President Vladimir Putin noted in February that people at defense plants were working “very hard, in two, and in some places, three shifts.” However, the authorities intend to increase arms orders from defense industry enterprises to supplement spending on during the war in Ukraine and to replenish stocks, Putin stressed.

In May, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed a new head of the Ministry of Defense – economist-cybernetics by education, former First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov. Explaining his decision, Putin said that Belousov had to find a balance between “weapons and oil” because while increasing defense and security spending, the authorities must fulfill all social obligations to the country’s population.

“But this connection must be organically integrated into the general development strategy of the Russian state,” Putin stressed. He noted that growing defense spending is “organically connected” to civilian industries. “Which, in turn, gives impetus to the development of the industry overall, preserves and increases jobs in the country,” Putin said.

The head of the Russian Sberbank, German Gref, also at the forum in St. Petersburg, called this model of economic growth “primitive”, because due to budget injections – mainly in machine building – the wages of citizens increase, which, given the limited number of goods, leads to a rise in prices “Thus, labor productivity is not only not growing, but also falling. This is the exhaustion of today’s growth model,” Gref noted.

He also drew attention to the record low unemployment in the country (2.6%) and the extremely high capacity utilization (81%). This, according to Gref, shows the limit of Russia’s economic growth.