09.05.09

The Russian Ministry of Health and Social Development expects this year's unemployment rate in the country to be 3.8 percent, a ministry official said on Wednesday.

At the same time, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) predicts that Russia's unemployment rate will be 10.4 percent, the official said.

Officially registered unemployment in Russia currently stands at 2,267,600, the official said.

According to the ministry, the indicator went down by 0.7 percent over the week from April 23 to April 29, the official said, adding that it was the first decrease in unemployment since the beginning of the financial crisis.

In the week from April 16 to 22, the total number of officially registered jobless grew by one percent, the official said.

The Nizhny Novgorod regions, as well as Moscow and St. Petersburg reported the more significant decrease of the jobless officially registered in the local employment services, the official said.

At the same time, several Russian regions reported on a slight growth of unemployment rate, the ministry's official said.

The total number of the dismissed reached 360,018 since the beginning of October 2008. As many as 113,942 of that number were employed, including 63,987 with their former employers, he said.

All in all, 1,553,400 employees were temporarily out of work, worked part-time or had to go on forced vacations, the official said.

The Ministry's monitoring is based on an official information about planned dismissals, received from employers of 34,283 organisations from all Russian regions.

At the same time, Federal State Statistics Service reported that the total number of unemployed people in Russia exceeded 7.1 million in January-March 2009, thus increasing by 34.4 percent versus the same period of 2008, the Prime Tass economic news agency said.

Overall unemployment in Russia in the first three months of the year grew by 33.9 percent, as compared to the same period in 2008, Prime Tass said, adding that official unemployment went up by 41.9 percent.

The Federal State Statistics Service estimated the number of able-bodied citizens at 74.8 million in Russia in January-March 2009, which makes up more than 53 percent of the country's population, Prime Tass said.

According to statistics, 52.5 percent of all employed in February 2009 were working in organisations not related to small business.

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Source: Itar-Tass