Молодые и пожилые работники на российском рынке труда: являются ли они конкурентами?

Abstract

This article explores possible competition between the young and older workers in Russia. For the last 15 years, the employment level of 60-64 year old people rose while the employment level of 20-24 year old people fell and their unemployment was near constant. In the article, we show that this trends were independent. First, because of the peculiar properties of supply and demand of young and older people's labor force, direct competition between two groups is limited. By the supply side young and older workers have significant differences in qualifications they have. By the demand side even though their wages are almost equal, workplaces they occupy are also different if we compare them with the jobs occupied by 30-49 year old workers. Second, we used regional characteristics of the labor market and showed that there is no effect of the one of the groups' employment on the employment and unemployment of the other group. Therefore, the young and the older workers are not competitors on Russian labor market. On the contrary specialization of each group on their own professions and sectors creates the possibility for interaction in Russia. That is why we can expect position of young people in labor market wouldn't change after rising of pension age in Russia.