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- Catch the footage: the authorities have withdrawn 720 thousand Russians from shadow employment
Catch the footage: the authorities have withdrawn 720 thousand Russians from shadow employment
Since the beginning of 2025, the authorities have legalized 720 thousand Russians - 100 thousand more than a year ago, the Ministry of Labor told Izvestia. Employment contracts were signed with these citizens, and some were registered as self-employed or sole proprietors. Many Russians still receive their salaries in an envelope, so control over the "gray" schemes is being tightened. Thus, the tax authorities have already begun to check the incomes of Muscovites who are not formally employed. Shadow employment damages the budget and deprives employees of social guarantees. About what methods are used to identify illegal schemes and what sanctions threaten employers who hire employees without registration — in the material of Izvestia.
How many Russians receive a salary in an envelope
There are interdepartmental commissions in Russia that deal with the identification and legalization of shadow employment. In the first nine months of 2025, about 720 thousand people were able to enter the legal field - almost 100 thousand more than in the same period a year earlier, the press service of the Ministry of Labor told Izvestia. Official employment contracts were concluded with most of them, and some were registered as self-employed or registered as an individual entrepreneur, the department clarified.
Shadow employment is an employment relationship between an employee and an employer that deliberately hides from the state. In such cases, the parties often limit themselves to an oral agreement instead of a formal employment contract. This category also includes working without a required license, receiving a salary in an envelope, and informal part-time work.
The increase in detected cases of illegal employment is explained by several factors at once. On the one hand, the authorities are increasingly identifying those who have gone into the shadows, and on the other, the whitewashing process is largely due to a shortage of personnel, explained Viktor Lyashok, senior researcher at the INSAP Center of the IPEI Presidential Academy.
According to him, employees are gradually refusing to work informally and choose companies that offer formal registration. However, against the background of rising costs due to high rates and tax changes, companies are increasingly trying to hire people without proper registration in order to save on insurance premiums.
Traditionally, the greatest concentration of illegal labor relations is observed in small and microbusiness, primarily in the areas of trade, car service, household services and the beauty industry, said Yulia Zvyagina, ambassador of the Top 50 HR Award.
This year, the tax authorities began inspections of formally unemployed Muscovites who do not declare their incomes, Marina Tretyakova, head of the Federal Tax Service for Moscow, said earlier. According to her, given the scale of the problem and the associated risks to the budget and the labor market, this topic will be under constant control of the department.
How to deal with shadow employment
As part of the fight against illegal employment, the Ministry of Labor has prepared a draft order (Izvestia has it), which expands the list of data available to interdepartmental commissions. The information will be transmitted to them by the Federal Tax Service. In particular, we are talking about cases when a company attracts more than 35 self-employed or sole proprietors with a monthly income of over 35 thousand rubles for a long time, explained Elena Chernosvitova, head of the BBNP Labor Practice. This information will make it possible to more effectively identify tax evasion and insurance premium schemes.
In general, the authorities are aiming to increase the transparency of the labor market and tighten control over the legalization of employment, said Sergey Elin, head of the AIP audit and consulting group and an expert on financial and legal business security at the Moscow branch of Opora Russia. According to him, increasing state supervision will encourage employers to comply more closely with the law, formalize employees and abandon informal payment schemes.
In May, the government approved a plan to combat illegal employment for 2025-2027. The document includes 18 measures, and it pays special attention to identifying cases of substitution of employment contracts with civil law ones. Among the measures are the creation of a register of employers where illegal workers have been found, an analysis of the number of unemployed citizens, an assessment of the scale of the shadow labor market, an awareness campaign and monitoring the effectiveness of decisions taken.
According to Rostrud, 2.2 million workers have been legalized over the past three years.
What harm does illegal employment do to the economy
Proper registration of labor relations directly affects the provision of social guarantees and the protection of employees' rights, the Ministry of Labor emphasized. When working in the "gray" zone, employees are effectively deprived of insurance pensions, paid vacations and legally prescribed working conditions, said Viktor Lyashok from the Presidential Academy.
According to Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets, Associate Professor of the basic Department of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry "Human Resource Management" at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, illegal employment also carries serious economic and social risks for both employees themselves, business and the state. It leads to budget losses, a decrease in the level of social security of the population, which subsequently causes the treasury to incur additional costs to support citizens without pensions, and the formation of unfair competition in the labor market.
Companies, seeking to reduce costs, run the risk of facing serious sanctions — fines, additional taxes, insurance premiums and penalties for late payments, the expert said. The fine for an employer can range from 50,000 to 100,000 rubles. If evasion of payment of contributions on a particularly large scale is detected, criminal liability already ensues.
According to Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets, the problem of illegal employment is still one of the most acute in the country. At the same time, it is hardly possible to completely eliminate it, since such practices are a natural element of a market economy, especially in conditions of instability and shortage of personnel, says Yulia Zvyagina from Top 50 HR.
According to Rosstat estimates, about 16 million people worked in the shadows in 2024, the highest figure since 2016.
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