Structural adjustment without mass unemployment? : lessons from Russia

Mass unemployment has usually been seen as a necessary accompaniment to major structural adjustment, yet in Russia, amid economic collapse, enormous structural changes have taken place with remarkably low levels of unmeployment.

Some have seen low unemployment as a sign that Russia has undergone no rela changes, but others see it as a sign of remarkably flexible labour market, with very high rates of labour turnover and extremes of wage differentiation allowing low-wage (and even no-wage) employment to persist in the old industries alongside the growth of a new private sector.

On this interpretation, Russia shows to the world, in extreme form, both the benefits and the costs of labour market flexibility.Drawing on the latest Russian and western research, the contributors to this book consider the debates surrounding the recorded levels of official unmeployment and question why these levels remain so low.

They offer theoretical and empirical critiques of orthodox western interpretations of the Russian labour market and discuss labour market flexibility, proposing that increased flexibility has resulted in a downgrading of skills in the industrial labour force.

This phenomenon, they argue, has particularly affected women who, as a result, have now become marginalized in the labour market.

In the detailed empirical evidence they conclude that both the employed and the unemployed are active and adaptable in their search for new forms of employment, and, as a consequence, will respond to more active and effective policy interventions.

In view of this, the contributors raise questions about appropriate industrial and labour market policies for all transitional economies.

This book should be welcomed by students, researchers and academics working int he fields of labour and industrial economics and in the economics of transition.