Is Russia Restructuring? New Evidence on Job Creation and Destruction
The authors explore the labor dynamics of Russian enterprise restructuring, empirically assessing how patterns of job creation and destruction are related to various aspects of enterprise restructuring across firms in different sectors and regions,...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/07/1552001/russia-restructuring-new-evidence-job-creation-destruction http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19574 |
| Summary: | The authors explore the labor dynamics
of Russian enterprise restructuring, empirically assessing
how patterns of job creation and destruction are related to
various aspects of enterprise restructuring across firms in
different sectors and regions, and to different forms,
sizes, vintages, and performance characteristics of
ownership. Evidence from case studies - based on more than
50 site visits in 2000 - suggests that jobs have been
destroyed, but only to a limited degree in some sectors and
regions, largely because of institutional and incentive
constraints and a still-widespread "socialist"
corporate culture. Jobs have been created - particularly in
sectors where devaluation had the most pronounced effect on
important substitution and export promotion - but only
slowly, mostly for lack of skilled workers and because
regional mobility is limited. Labor turnover appears higher
within regions than across regions. Newly available data for
1996 - 99 (provided by Goskomstat) for about 128,000
enterprises in 24 industrial sectors in Russia's 89
regions indicates that the typical firm has experienced only
modest downsizing - about 12 percent - in number of
employees. Smaller firms have entered, and larger, mature
businesses have exited some sectors. Except for a lull in
1998, the rate of job creation has steadily increased and
the rate of job destruction has declined, dropping
substantially in 1998 - 99. "Voluntary" worker
separations remain the main - and growing - form of layoff,
and the proportion of layoffs through redundancies is
shrinking (now about 4 percent of total separations). Firm
size and net employment growth are not statistically
related, but form of ownership seems to matter. Firm size is
also statistically correlated (positively) with
profitability, but restructuring through changes in net
employment growth appears not to be. It seems Russian
restructuring needs to become more efficient. |
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