Russian companies have started to reduce their hiring

Companies have reduced the number of open vacancies in the first three months of 2025 by 15% compared to the same period last year, the service calculated for Izvestia. hh.ru . At the beginning of 2025, there were 2.3 million of them in the country.

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In previous years, the number of vacancies in the first quarter only increased. For comparison, from January to March 2024, a third more vacancies were posted, the recruitment service clarified.

The Central Bank also recorded a change in the trend in hiring employees. According to the regulator, although unemployment remains low at 2.4%, the number of new vacancies has decreased.

However, the All—Russian Research Institute of Labor provided data for January and February of this year - monitoring showed an increase in offers: the number of published vacancies increased by 2.2%, amounting to 2.7 million, said acting Director General of the organization Vladimir Smirnov.

Some companies are reducing their hiring due to the difficult financial situation related to economic rates, says Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets, Associate Professor of the Basic Department of Human Resource Management at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation. Due to the high key rate (21%), the cost of corporate loans rose above 25%. Servicing loans is expensive, which is why companies stop investing in development.

"At the same time, companies are becoming less able to continue increasing salaries at the same pace. Therefore, they try to optimize business processes, reducing the need for employees," said Olga Belenkaya, Head of the Macroeconomic Analysis Department at Finam.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Clean labor: Russian companies have begun to reduce the hiring of employees