Labor migration to Russia: Reduction of flows accompanied by a little-changing geography

This paper, based on data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB of the Russian Federation, estimates the current number and geography of attracting foreign labor migrants in Russia; analyzes the list of main donor countries of labor migration and possible prospects for its change. Using Pension Fund of the Russian Federation data, the employment structure of foreign migrants and the Russians is compared. It is shown that the average annual number of migrant workers staying in Russia in the last two years has not returned to the pre-pandemic level and now does not exceed 4-4.5% of those employed in the Russian labor market. At the present stage, almost 90% of labor migration is provided by migrants from three Central Asian countries - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan; the first two countries also make the main contribution to regional budgets in the form of payments for patents. The employment structure of foreign migrant workers continues to differ significantly from the employment structure of the Russians, which, given the shortage of workers in the Russian labor market, makes competition between them unlikely. The geography of attracting migrants is almost unchanged accompanied by a decrease in their number: as before, the share of the two capitals and their regions accounts for more than half of all foreigners working in Russia; the share of each of the other regions forming the top 20 in this indicator does not exceed 1-2%.