The Politics of Labor-Market Adjustment: The Case of Russia

Abstract

By mediating the impact of macroeconomic stabilization and fiscal adjustment on the everyday life of the population, labor markets play an important role in determining the success of the transition to the market. After seven years of transition, however, the Russian labor market still seems to be performing quite differently from the labor markets in other transition countries. Hungary and Poland faced sharp declines in employment early in the transition. Unemployment rates there remain quite high even now, after several subsequent years of economic growth. The Czech Republic has little unemployment, but this must be set against slow economic restructuring and continuing government support to ailing enterprises.