Minister of Labor and Social Protection Anton Kotyakov announced an increase in the official number of unemployed in Russia. Speaking at an enlarged meeting of the Federation Council committee on social policy, the minister acknowledged that the tension in the labor market "is starting to grow."

The head of the Ministry of Labor did not disclose figures during the discussion, however, he acknowledged that fixed unemployment began to rise in June, although “this is, in principle, very low figures for the Russian economy.” Until June, according to Kotyakov, the number of officially unemployed was in the range of 660-680 thousand people.

“To a certain extent, we see that the tension in the labor market is gradually starting to increase,” the minister admitted.

The official connects the growth of unemployment with the departure of foreign companies, which, due to the war in Ukraine, have sharply reduced their presence in Russia. Kotyakov says his department is taking all sorts of measures to mitigate the exit of a large number of employers, including the creation of temporary jobs, retraining programs, paid public works and, finally, unemployment benefits.

The Ministry of Labor for the first time publicly announced an increase in the number of unemployed, which may indicate a change in trend, before that Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova spoke about a slight increase. Russian President Vladimir Putin regularly passed off low unemployment as economic success, claiming in early June that the number of unemployed was at an all-time low. However, the official unemployment rate is a weak indicator, which, as a rule, reacts to labor market trends with a time lag, since it records only those citizens who have registered with the labor exchange.