Russia continues to attract migrant labour despite low wages

Migrants in Russia have come to the rescue of its labour market as it rebounds after close to two years of recession.

Since 1998, Russia has seen migrants arriving continuously even though the wages are lower than that of Brazil and China because of its currency crisis.

A report published by the United Nations in 2015 showed that Russia hosted the second largest number of migrants globally as their number reached 12 million.

Yaroslav Kuzminov, a rector of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, was quoted by American Journal of Transportation said that migrants now make up for five to seven percent of the labour market. In fact, working population of the Soviet Republic was around 76.6 million in 2016, remaining unchanged from the previous year.

The Federal Statistics Service said that largest source markets for migrant labourers in Russia were China, North Korea, Vietnam, Turkey and Serbia in the last quarter of 2016.