The Russian labor market, constrained by record low unemployment, is betting on artificial intelligence. As Mikhail Kirsanov, Director of the Department of Population Employment at the Russian Ministry of Labor, told TASS, automation will help compensate for the acute shortage of skilled professionals and redistribute the workload where the supply of labor has almost dried up.
Technologies do not fire people, but change the content of their work. AI will take over repetitive operations, accelerate data processing, and increase productivity, allowing employees to focus on complex tasks. But the transition will require massive retraining: companies will have to teach staff to work with digital tools, build new processes, and retain specialists capable of adaptation.
The main barrier is not automation itself, but the readiness of businesses to pay for staff retraining. The Russian Ministry of Labor is connecting free retraining and employment incentive programs, but the decisive factor will remain the speed with which employers reassemble internal regulations. Without this, even the most perfect algorithm will not fill the gap in the staffing table.