Russia's unemployment to grow in 2010: analysts

Russia's unemployment last year stood at 8.2 per cent of the economically active population, a federal statistics service said.

Experts believe things will be getting from bad to worse and by the end of this year as many as ten percent of the able-bodied Russians will be jobless. A surge in unemployment to 9.5 million is expected by July, Rosstat reported.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has voiced alarm over the situation on the market of labor. Although the crisis seems to have eased for a while and many economic parameters look slightly better, joblessness will be the worst problem of this year, the head of state said.

According to the Health and Social Development Ministry, the number of jobless in Russia increased by 1.2 per cent over the past week. The point at issue is the official unemployment rate - the number of citizens who have had themselves registered at employment services. As at February 15 more than 2.232 million were listed as jobless.

According to the ministry more than 70,000 employers across the nation cut jobs. Unemployment growth was observed in 73 regions.

The daily Vremya Novostei says the Health and Social Development Ministry statistics showing how many Russians have lost work since the beginning of the crisis disagree with those collected by the Federation of Independent Trade Unions.

"The overall number of those who went redundant in September 2008 through January 2010 reached 1.76 million," sources at the FITU said with reference to the Federation's own monitoring results.