Alexander Zhukov's address:

This is one of a series of video conferences devoted to monitoring the situation on the labour market in the Russian regions. The conference aims to assess employment and unemployment, to discuss the implementation of regional programmes and their measures to reduce tensions on the labour market in 2010.

We should approach the situation on the labour market in 2010 with restrained optimism, despite the consolidation of positive trends with regard to the main labour market indices.

Since early 2010, the economically active population has increased from 67.7 million in January to 68.2 million in March, or by 500,000 people.

Since the start of the year, the total number of unemployed has declined by 400,000 (from 6.8 million, or 9.2% of the economically active population in March to 6.4 million or 8.6% in February). The same indice was posted in March.

The Central Federal District had the lowest general unemployment levels (5.6%) in the first quarter, and the highest levels (19.5%) were posted in the North Caucasian Federal District.

The number of the registered unemployed has declined by 90,000 from 2,286,000 on February 24 to 2,196,000 on April 21. This decline was posted in most constituent entities.

The number of unemployed individuals registered with employment services per vacancy have dropped from 3.2 to 2.5 since early 2010.

This reduction was largely the result of an increased number of vacancies submitted by employers to employment service divisions, including through the creation of jobs at small businesses.

The number of vacancies increased from 724,000 in December 2009 to 987,000 in March 2010.

It should be noted that the share of employed individuals in the total number of people who had been made redundant grew steadily since October 2009.

The total number of part-time workers (the number of workers who are out of work through the employer's fault, those working part-time on the employer's initiative and workers granted holidays on the employer's initiative) has declined considerably since late February by over 500,000 and now totals just over 1 million. At the same time, it should be noted that all categories of part-time workers tend to decline.

I would also like to note that wage arrears continue to decline. Such debts currently total 3.43 billion roubles, including 96 million roubles' worth of back wages caused by the late receipt of government allocations.

In an effort to increase employment and to provide social support for unemployed individuals, the government and constituent entities continue to implement additional planned projects aiming to reduce tensions on the regional labour markets throughout 2010.

In all, 40.5 billion roubles of budgetary funding is stipulated for the implementation of additional labour market support projects in 2010.

Some 13.3 billion roubles' worth of federal budget subsidies for financing first stage regional programmes (40% of total subsidy volumes) have been transferred to all constituent entities. Second stage subsidies, worth a total of 5 billion roubles, have been transferred to 22 constituent entities, which have spent 50% of the first stage subsidies.

In all, 18.3 billion roubles' worth of federal budget funding, or over 55% of total budgetary allocations stipulated by the relevant programmes, has been transferred under specific agreements.

As part of regional programmes, contracts worth 16.1 billion roubles for involving 796,000 people in additional projects to reduce regional labour market tensions have been signed. 658,000 people, or over 50% of those due to be involved in regional programmes, have started taking part in these projects.

I would like to remind you that a federal law stipulating tax exemptions on sums received by individuals wishing to open their own businesses and creating additional job incentives was passed on April 5. This creates additional self-employment incentives and promotes entrepreneurial activity among unemployed individuals.

The government is finalising a draft law which will be used to compile forecasts of human resources. This will make it possible to assess the long-term balance between supply and demand on the labour market, as well as the effectiveness of regulating the processes of formation and use of human resources.

In conclusion, I would like to say a few words about executive discipline as regards the fulfillment of instructions passed at the previous government meeting on monitoring the labour market situation.

On April 12, the heads of executive government agencies in a number of constituent entities were instructed to speed up the adoption of the required regulatory documents as regards the implementation of additional projects at the expense of refundable 2009 federal budget balance and to report to the government by April 20, 2010.

The Karachayevo-Circassian Republic, the Krasnodar Territory, the Volgograd, Ivanovo, Kemerovo, Kurgan, Magadan, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Samara and Sverdlovsk regions have so far failed to submit the required information.

Moreover, the Tula and Yaroslavl regions were supposed to finalise regional programmes being implemented at the expense of the repaid 2009 federal budget balance and to submit such programmes to the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development. However, this has not been accomplished to date.

I would like to ask the leaders of these regions to personally oversee the implementation of these instructions and to complete all the work by the end of April.