Irregular activities on the Russian labour market

Irregular activities on the Russian labor market

At present time it seems that the growth of irregular activities is global trend. This fact was predicted by Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and other sociologists. Does this trend exist in modern Russia? According to our investigation, there are a lot of forms of irregular activities on the Russian labor market.

 Irregular activities include part-time employment, overtime employment, temporary or fixed-term employment, casual employment. Often researchers include in this term secondary and informal employment. But the question is whether these forms are positive effect of national economy or they may be considered as indicators of market problems? Before 1990 in Russia was built socialism. Since 1991 an attempt to create a democratic society was made. Does a democratic society exist in Russia now?

Non-standard employment may be, on the one hand, an advantage if, besides the required level of income allows the employee to regulate, for example, working hours. On the other hand, it may be a necessity, if non-standard employment is a consequence of employee's impossibility to find a work with a standard schedule.

It seems true that the benefits of non-standard employment can be used by highly skilled workers in certain occupations, on the contrary non-standard work is usually used by retiree, students and professionals without work experience, pregnant women and so on.

 Thus, in this work a goal to investigate the nature of unemployment are set.

The main purpose of the study is to describe forms of irregular activities on the Russian labor market (since 2005) and reveal workers with which social, economic, and demographic characteristics seems to have an irregular work.

Research methods: quantitative analysis of statistical data, depth interview.