In Russia, the hiring of officials is put "on hold", but they still make their way to power

Yekaterina Maximova

By the middle of last year, as the Central Bank noted in one of its bulletins "What trends are talking about", in the "civil service" segment, the number of offers from employers decreased to 80%. The trend lasted for several months. And in annual terms, if we compare the annual analytics hh.ru , hiring for the civil service collapsed by 79%. And this is a record for Russia.

The situation in the regions was different, but the trend of reduction affected everyone. The leader in the number of "frozen" official vacancies was the Southern Federal District (-91% in annual terms). This is followed by the Central Federal District (-88%), the Ural Federal District (-77%), the Siberian Federal District (-73%). In other subjects of the Russian Federation, the drop was recorded in the range from 60 to 70%. And only the Far Eastern District showed +36%.

"After the start of the SMO, the main personnel decisions were rigidly put on hold. In addition, the optimization of the staff of executive authorities was announced earlier. There are questions about the budgets - federal and regional. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there were record anti-crisis spending. Now fabulous spending on ITS own. It is quite logical that the state structures froze. In particular, more precisely, first of all, it affected the personnel policy. Decisions were made to suspend the previously planned hiring," the head of the governor's office of one of the subjects of the Russian Federation shared on condition of anonymity.

Political scientist Nikolay Mironov confirms: new bids are not opened.

"There is no expansion of the state apparatus now, let's say. New vacancies were mainly associated with the expansion of certain areas. That is, with a change in the structure itself. Now it has become less, because the state apparatus, of course, adheres to the principles of economy", - says Mironov.

At the same time, the political scientist notes, the turnover of personnel in the civil service is traditionally small. "It depends, of course, on the department, on the region. It happens in different ways. But in general, this is not a business where people can change quickly: I worked for a week and left. In general, people who hold on to work go to the civil service. And the longer you work in the authorities, the more difficult it is to leave such a service", - he adds.

The Director General of the Center for Political Information, political scientist Alexey Mukhin notes that in the conditions of the SMO it is difficult not to pay attention to the too large branching of the bureaucratic apparatus.

"I would associate the reduction in the number of vacancies with the initiatives of Mikhail Mishustin, His colleague Dmitry Grigorenko, not as usual - formally, but in a real way approached the problem of reducing, optimizing the state apparatus. Not to the detriment of the quality of work. Remember we laughed when Alexey Leonidovich Kudrin and other heads of the government apparatus talked about reducing the state apparatus by 10%, and then the staff increased by the same 10%. Apparently, now professionals have taken up the case and such a reduction is due to a number of reasons", - says Mukhin.

Civil servants, Mukhin adds, have been "reduced", including digitalization.

"It allows you to optimize certain processes, a fairly large number of vacancies have really been released. Optimization also took place as a result of the so-called legislative guillotine, when a lot of instructions, resolutions, and a huge number of documents were simply cut off in order not to complicate the work of the state apparatus. There are quite a lot of reasons, but the purpose and implementation of this goal suggests that this reduction of the state apparatus can be attributed as a plus to Mikhail Mishustin", - Mukhin summed up.

They stopped and... continued

Statistics on the employment of employees at the federal, regional and municipal levels have begun to change since the beginning of 2023. In February, according to analysts hh.ru , the number of vacancies in the public sector was +10%. The Volga Federal District was the first to "recoup" during the year of downtime, where the number of vacancies immediately increased by 69%.

For the rest of the regions, the positive dynamics is as follows: the Northwestern Federal District +10%, the North Caucasian Federal District +19%, the Central Federal District +34%. The Far Eastern Federal District (-13%), Siberian Federal District (-9%), Southern Federal District (-16%), Ural Federal District (-4%) were in the red.

Yelena Kiselyova, an analyst at the Institute for Integrated Strategic Studies, comparing January 2023 with December 2022, notes that the seasonal factor associated with the New Year holidays could have played a role. "State structures are usually characterized by bureaucratization, so recruitment there is not fast. In addition, it can be assumed that government agencies have been instructed to save the budget and reduce staff, primarily due to vacant jobs", - Kiselyova says.

Nikolay Mironov, in turn, adds that statistics from recruiting platforms are not very indicative at all. The process of hiring officials is not paralyzed at all, it just changes.

"There is an influx of people without interaction with recruitment platforms. And in general, the state apparatus does not have much confidence in the external pages from which candidates come. They are more often looking through personnel reserves, there are reserves of managerial personnel that are trying to create in the regions. Not at the expense of a resume on hh.ru , and from the selection of talents based on the results of competitions, work with the student community, internships of all kinds. There is in general, in principle, internal recruiting. Advanced government agencies usually carry out their internal work. There are separate, independent mechanisms for finding personnel, they give more results. The quality of frames from external platforms is often not very good, there is a large flow of slag, it needs to be isolated, and this is extra work. Simply put, it is extremely difficult to get into the civil service from the street now, and certainly the share of such personnel is decreasing. But the mechanisms for internal recruitment, on the contrary, are improving over the years", - says Nikolay Mironov.

At the same time, since the beginning of the year, applicants have been posting resumes more often in the hope of getting a job in the civil service. The largest increase in such vacancies was recorded in the Volga Federal District and the Southern Federal District, where in February the growth of resumes was +10% and +7%, respectively. But the choice of vacancies, as well as monetary allowances, are unlikely to impress applicants. Ordinary specialists are required in departments, ministries and committees, lawyers, IT specialists, public relations specialists. In the capital cities, the proposed salary can reach up to 90 thousand rubles. On the periphery, white-collar workers are paid half as much.

Are there any officials in the regiment?

The reform, which political scientist Mukhin recalled above, was announced by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin back in 2020. It was announced that the number of civil servants in Russia will be reduced by almost 10%.

In 2021, the head of the government staff Dmitry Grigorenko reported that the staffing of the central offices was "cut" by 213 units, territorial bodies - by 31,642 units. He stressed that the cuts were carried out at the expense of the vacancies used with the preservation of wages.

"An excessive chain of supervisors reduced efficiency and increased administrative costs", - the Deputy Prime Minister explained.

High-ranking regional officials, demanding to preserve their anonymity, claim that in fact they have the opportunity to avoid such a massive purge of personnel. To create the correct statistics, which are sent to the federal center, the regionals deliberately create "empty" vacancies, which they painlessly refuse for the sake of beautiful reports. Here, they say, look, they have reduced it.

Such a trick is also common: new employees are "scattered" among subordinate organizations and unitary enterprises, where they do not pass according to the official report card. Especially if the person was hired under a civil contract.

"Not the most ordinary official spends more than 50% of his time on various kinds of meetings and preparing a bunch of reports. For the same Moscow - first of all. And the volume of work, tasks, and the number of reports is only growing. Well, what a reduction, it's unrealistic. It's just ridiculous", - the head of one of the regional ministries said on condition of anonymity.

Alexander Yusupovsky, ex-adviser to the analytical department of the Federation Council, is also very critical of the ongoing reforms.

"The state apparatus has been growing all the time and it has not always been rationally explained. When I worked in the SF apparatus, several times there were withdrawals from the staff, attempts at some reforms, transplants, etc. And we sadly joked that with the next reduction of the apparatus, the bosses are preserved every time, moreover, the number of bosses is growing exponentially, and the grassroots workers, on whom the entire state apparatus rests, are being cut in the first place. This is sad humor, but the same reorganization of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, let me remind you, led to an increase in complaints that there are not enough precinct officers and workers "in the fields", and offices - everything is fine there, everything is staffed", - Yusupovsky recalled.

Question price

According to the consolidated data of Rosstat, there are more than 680 thousand people in state authorities, municipalities are almost half as many - more than 307 thousand employees. As reported by Novye Izvestia, by the 20s in Russia there is an official apparatus (of all levels, including judicial authorities) it has grown to 5.7 million people.

If civil servants and federal officials are singled out directly from this mass, then the figure, of course, will noticeably decrease. About twice. And then the Rosstat data "fights" with relatively recent statements by the officials themselves.

So, in 2019, First Deputy Finance Minister Tatyana Nesterenko estimated that there are about 2.4 million officials in Russia. This is 3.3% of the number of people employed in the economy. And for every 10 thousand Russians, there are 163 state administrators (that is, one state official has 61.3 wards).

Salaries of officials, judging by Rosstat data, range from 194.8 thousand rubles (federal level, not counting the Presidential Administration). Average incomes of regionals (excluding indexations) they range from 35 to 80 thousand rubles and above.

And as the dollar billionaire Oleg Deripaska recently said, it's time to cut officials two or three times. "The question has already matured that there is too much of this state apparatus and state capitalism. We need more freedom, really more freedom of competition," Mr. Deripaska said. Here is a recipe from Deripaska: the reduction of officials - by two or three times, law enforcement officers - by a couple of times.

Political scientist Nikolay Mironov confirms: new bets are not opened.

Nikolay Mironov, in turn, adds that the statistics from recruiting platforms are not very indicative at all. The process of hiring officials is not paralyzed at all, it just changes.

At the same time, since the beginning of the year, applicants have been posting resumes more often in the hope of getting a job in the civil service. The largest growth of such vacancies was recorded in the Volga Federal District and the Southern Federal District, where in February the growth of resumes was +10% and +7%, respectively. But the choice of vacancies, as well as monetary allowances, are unlikely to impress applicants. Ordinary specialists are required in departments, ministries and committees, lawyers, IT specialists, public relations specialists. In the capital cities, the proposed salary can reach up to 90 thousand rubles. On the periphery, white-collar workers are paid half as much.

In 2021, the head of the government apparatus Dmitry Grigorenko reported that the staffing of the central offices was "cut" by 213 units, territorial bodies - by 31,642 units. He stressed that the cuts were carried out at the expense of the vacancies used with the preservation of wages.

High-ranking regional officials, demanding their anonymity, claim that in fact they have the opportunity to avoid such a massive purge of personnel. To create the correct statistics, which are sent to the federal center, the regionals deliberately create "empty" vacancies, which they painlessly refuse for the sake of beautiful reports. Here, they say, look, they have reduced it.

If civil servants and federal officials are singled out directly from this mass, then the figure, of course, will noticeably decrease. About twice. And then the Rosstat data "beats" with relatively recent statements by the officials themselves.