The recruiting expert named the reasons for the reduction of the personnel reserve in Russia

The reduction of the personnel reserve in Russia is systemic and is associated with several long-term factors. Roman Yerkhov, CEO of TuBi recruitment company, told Izvestia on April 27.

According to him, the demographic situation plays a key role: a small generation is entering the labor market, while the share of older workers is gradually increasing. At the same time, competition for staff is intensifying — companies are more actively attracting students, pensioners and women with children to work. The development of technology has an additional impact: some functions are already being replaced by solutions based on artificial intelligence, which leads to a redistribution of demand for labor.

"Students and pensioners have been most actively involved in the labor market in recent years. Young people are increasingly starting to work during their studies due to the development of flexible forms of employment, and employers, in turn, are interested in attracting experienced professionals. Women on maternity leave also began to return to work faster, which is facilitated by the spread of the remote format. They are most often attracted to positions related to customer service and remote interaction," the expert explained.

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At the same time, according to him, people with disabilities remain the least involved group. This is due to infrastructural and organizational constraints: the labor market is not yet sufficiently adapted for their mass inclusion.

The shrinking talent pool is already exacerbating the shortage of workers in a number of industries, primarily in industry, construction and transport, where the proportion of working professions is high. In these segments, staff shortages are becoming critical: salary increases do not always compensate for the shortage, and staff turnover remains high.

The situation is less acute in office professions, but the shortage is evident in narrow areas such as cybersecurity, IT engineering and project management. At the same time, automation and the introduction of AI reduce the demand for some routine functions, increasing the requirements for the qualifications of employees.

According to Yerkhov, further reduction of the personnel reserve will lead to more difficult hiring and longer closing times. In these circumstances, companies are increasingly focusing on internal employee development, process automation, and role structure revision. The sustainability of a business, as the expert emphasized, will directly depend on the ability to increase productivity and flexibly manage employment.

On the same day, it was reported that the personnel reserve in Russia is rapidly declining: in 2025, it decreased to 4.4 million people — by 9%. This is 415 thousand less than a year earlier. Such data was provided by FinExpertiza based on statistics from Rosstat and Rostrud (Izvestia has the document).