Labor Mobility of People from the Monotowns in Sverdlovsk oblast

Abstract

A constant population decline and an outflow of the working population are trends that are always associated with the Russian monotowns. However, socio-economic situation differs according to these towns. The article indentifies types of monotowns depending on the directions of labor mobility (outflow of the local population; inflow of human resources from other localities).  The Sverdlovsk oblast representing a region with a high share of people living in monocities is taken as a case study.

Based on the analysis of the data from 2010 Russian national population census and the 2011 Continuous statistical observation of small and medium businesses the Sverdlovsk monocities are divided into four groups depending on the labor mobility specifics. The first group comprises monotowns with an outflow of workers. The second group is represented by the monotowns where people come to work. The third group includes monotowns where labor mobility has two directions: some part of the city’s working population works outside the city, but certain people from other locations come there to work.

The author also detects those monotowns where labor mobility is not intense. The author concludes that the existing representations of the worker outflow in the monotowns do not reflect the current situation in the labor market.  This problem is not only due to workforce shortage but also due to failure to meet the requirements of a particular labor market, because barriers to labor mobility are not taken into consideration. The author considers mobility not only as part of economic production but also as part of social infrastructure of the cities.

Acknowledgments. The article is part of the ‘Trajectories of mobility of the working-age population of small and medium-sized monotowns of various profiles’ project supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), no. 18-011-00457, 2018—2020.