The Ministry of Labor has withdrawn 720 thousand Russians from shadow employment

In the first nine months of 2025, about 720 thousand employees were legalized. This is almost 100,000 more than in the same period last year, the press service of the Ministry of Labor told Izvestia. Employment contracts were signed with them, and some became self-employed or sole proprietors, the department added.

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The authorities have become more effective in detecting those who have gone into the "shadow." In addition, the "whitewashing" is due to a shortage of personnel, said Viktor Lyashok, senior researcher at the INSAP Center of the IPEI Presidential Academy. Russians increasingly do not want to work informally, choosing companies where there is an official registration, he said.

The authorities are seeking to increase the transparency of the labor market by tightening control over illegal employment, said Sergey Elin, an expert on financial and legal business security at the Moscow branch of Opora Russia.

The Ministry of Labor has prepared a draft order (Izvestia has it), which expands the list of data available to interdepartmental commissions. For example, 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, said Elena Chernosvitova, head of the BBNP labor practice.

Earlier, the government approved a plan to combat illegal employment for 2025-2027. The document includes 18 different directions.

"Shadow" employment turns into economic and social problems for workers, business and the state, said Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets, Associate professor of the basic Department of the CCI "Human Resource Management" at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. It leads to budget losses and a decrease in the level of social security of citizens, the expert added. According to Rosstat, in 2024, just under 16 million people worked in the "shadow".

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Catch the footage: the authorities have withdrawn 720 thousand Russians from shadow employment