MOSCOW (Reuters) -The number of Russian companies planning to expand their headcount has more than halved since the end of last year, while those planning to make job cuts have risen slightly, an employer survey showed on Thursday.
Unemployment is at record lows in Russia and there are unfilled vacancies in some sectors after hundreds of thousands of Russian men left civilian life to fight in Ukraine. But the economy has begun to slow under the weight of high interest rates and Sberbank CEO German Gref warned last week there was a risk of recession unless rates come down a lot.
The survey, conducted among over 300 professionals across Russia by job sites Rabota.ru and SberPodbor, both owned by Russia’s largest lender Sberbank, showed that a quarter of respondents were planning to expand headcount from September, down from 56% at the end of last year.
The survey also showed that around 12% of Russian companies were planning layoffs this autumn, up 4 percentage points from the end of last year.
The same survey indicated that nearly two-thirds of companies anticipated stable headcount.
“The market is going through a phase of correction and ‘cooling’, where businesses are getting rid of the excess,” Alexander Veterkov, deputy CEO of Rabota.ru and chief operating officer of SberPodbor, said in a statement.
The first sectors to see cutbacks could be construction and finance as higher borrowing costs hit consumer demand, Veterkov said. Companies involved in import substitution, industrial production on government orders, the military-industrial complex, pharmaceuticals and cybersecurity were seeing either stable or growing headcounts, he added.
“The greatest demand and, as a result, the most competitive salary offers are now concentrated in the IT sector, manufacturing and industry, logistics and customer experience development,” Veterkov said.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Robert HarveyEditing by Andrew Osborn and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
