The article analyses the relationships between economic and demographic processes in contemporary Russia.Using index analysis, the author concluded that, in 2006–2018, a decline in the working-age population would have reduced, ceteris paribus, almost one-third of the GDP growth rate if the negative impact of this factor had not been fully compensated by an increase in the employment rate of the working-age population during this period. Growth of fertility in 2007–2015 would have led, if the influence of the situation on the labor market was eliminated, to a decrease in the number of employees by 1.2% (caused by the decline in female labor force participation rate), while fertility decrease after 2015 would have led to an increase in this number by 0.4%. Based on this estimation, it was concluded that the changes in fertility can, in the short term, have any significant impact on employment only in those types of economic activity in which the women of reproductive age make up the overwhelming majority of the employees.It has been suggested that the accumulation of socio-psychological prerequisites for a decline in fertility has led the demographic system, both in Western countries and in Russia, into a state of unstable equilibrium. The global financial crises of 2008–2009 and the 2014–2015 financial crisis in Russia upset this equilibrium and launched a mechanism for fertility decline. It is argued that in the period under consideration, the Russian economy adapted to the turbulence of the external environment more successfully than the demographic sphere