Russia wants to force retirees to work longer
In Russia, initiatives are being discussed that aim to encourage older people to remain in the workforce longer rather than retire completely. Pensioners are being offered retraining programs, short training courses, and the introduction of flexible work schedules, which are intended to help them remain in the labor market.
Currently, about 7 million of Russia’s 40.3 million retirees are still working. The Kremlin plans to use the rest as a labor market reserve and a way to save the state budget.
According to Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the country has never before experienced such an acute labor shortage.
Maksim Reshetnikov, head of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, has already stated that the government plans to partially address this problem by employing current retirees and people of pre-retirement age. They are being promised retraining, short courses, and flexible work schedules.
“Given that the average life expectancy in Russia is approximately 74 years (79 in Moscow, and in the Far East and Siberia—only 66 years), Russian retirees have a ‘real chance’ to experience a ‘second youth’ during their well-deserved retirement. However, it will not last long, as a return to the workforce will quickly create new problems,” the Foreign Intelligence Service noted.
The main labor shortage in Russia is observed in blue-collar professions, in manufacturing, in medicine, and in logistics.
“It is hard to imagine how an elderly engineer, already facing a host of health issues, could retrain as a laborer and significantly contribute to the production process,” the Service noted.
However, even the formal inclusion of older people in the labor market will allow Russian officials to demonstrate to the public the “effectiveness” of such a labor resource in the near future. And then the Kremlin’s previously tested principle will kick in: if they are working, then they don’t really need their pensions.
The Foreign Intelligence Service emphasizes that if, by early 2027, the experiment with pensioner employment yields at least some results, the Russian State Duma is ready to raise the issue again of the “need to adapt the pension system to demographic realities.”
“This will traditionally be sold to Russians as a ‘necessary measure,’ with the argument that the population itself has proven that it wants to work longer,” analysts predict, according to the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.
Read also: The Kremlin is driving Russians into debt en masse — SSU
