Official statistics reveal a quarter of Ingushetia's population is unemployed

These are the official figures, but the true numbers could be even higher.

Ingushetia has become the leader in Russia in terms of unemployment — more than a quarter (25.4%) of the republic's able-bodied population is officially unemployed, according to a new report by Rosstat, Russia’s official body of state statistics.

According to the document, unemployment in Ingushetia is more than 12 times higher than the national average (2.3 %), which, according to Russian officials, is at its lowest historical level.

In autumn, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said that the unemployment rate in Ingushetia was even higher — 27%. The situation in the region has developed against the backdrop of low wages and a high rate of shadow employment, Golikova said.

‘It is important to note here that the real situation is even more alarming. The figure of 25% refers to the officially unemployed according to the methodology of the International Labour Organization, that is, those who applied for financial assistance on their own.

Meanwhile, in Russia as a whole, about 20% of the able-bodied population are ‘hanging in the air’ — they are not officially unemployed, but they are not officially employed anywhere. The problem is old, and it has never been solved,’ said Sergei Zhavoronkov, a Russian economist and member of the board of the Liberal Mission Foundation. .

For a while, authorities gave grants to small businesses, but as soon as the grants ran out, business stopped too, Zhavoronkov told OC Media.

‘Perhaps we should look for a solution in tourism development, as the demand for domestic tourism is growing, and cattle breeding, as Ingushetia has a suitable climate. To do this, we should look for investors among state companies, which literally have nowhere else to put their money and are taking on non-core projects’, Zhavoronkov said.

At the same time, according to him, the figure of 25% still does not reflect the reality, as part of the population is employed unofficially.

In quantitative terms, among all Russian regions, the largest number of people are unemployed in Daghestan, where 168,000 out of 1.5 million are unemployed, marking an unemployment rate of 11%. Daghestan ranks second among all Russian regions by this indicator, following Ingushetia.

Other North Caucasian republics are also among the leaders in Russian unemployment: North Ossetia (8% unemployed), Chechnya (7.7%), Karachay-Cherkessia (7.2%), and Kabardino-Balkaria (4.8%).

The North Caucasus Federal District also came last in terms of average salary — ₽47,500 ($460), which is almost twice as low as the national average (₽84,000, or $825). The worst situation is in Ingushetia — according to Rosstat, the average official salary is ₽39,000 ($380).

In the first nine months of 2024, officially unemployed residents of Chechnya received ₽5.2 billion ($51 million) from the budget — the highest figure among Russian regions, accounting for 10% of all regional budget payments to the unemployed in the country as a whole.

Last year Ingushetia ranked last in the rating for the material well-being of its residents: the region scored about two points out of a possible 100. Other republics of the North Caucasus — Karachay-Cherkessia, Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria, Daghestan, and North Ossetia — were also in the bottom ten.

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OC MediaElizaveta Chukharova