From August 15 to September 15, more than 90,000 job offers from companies in the defense sector were published on the largest Russian job search portals, the Russian editors of the BBC calculated. The earnings offered in the professions with the most shortages reached three or four times the average salaries in the given region.
The greatest demand is for engineers, turners and operators of CNC machines, i.e. computer-controlled machine tools, the operation of which requires specific skills. There is a lack of such specialists on the market. Armories are often looking for people capable of working with Western equipment, for example from Siemens or Heidenhain.
Around two thousand turners were looking for work on the Avito portal at the beginning of September, while more than 60,000 vacancies were offered not only in armories. In the case of CNC operators, there were 18,600 vacancies for every 600 applicants. In many cases, published offers hang on the Internet for weeks or months, regardless of the attractive payment. Some recruiters offer potential employees to bring their friends with the same expertise for a reward of around ten thousand rubles (about 2400 crowns).
At the end of August, the Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Jelena Dybovová, stated on NTV that it is necessary to attract couriers and taxi drivers to work in armories, because there is a lack of manpower necessary to fulfill state contracts.
“In the last year and a half alone, 520,000 new jobs were created in the defense sector,” Russian leader Vladimir Putin said at the beginning of this year. A similar figure was given by Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, who told the newspaper Vedomosti in September that the problem had already passed its peak, but the lack of manpower is still felt. Since last year, the number of employees of the military industrial complex has increased by 600,000.
It’s not surprising. Russia constantly needs new weapons. But the data on their production are kept secret. Production growth can only be monitored based on occasional statements by state officials. In April of this year, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that last year the production of cars and armored vehicles tripled, the production of assault weapons and ammunition increased sevenfold, and the production of connecting equipment and means of radio-electronic warfare increased ninefold.
The fact that workers are missing in armories is due to the fact that, overall, Russia is experiencing a labor shortage. A small number of cohorts from the 90s of the last century entered the labor market, some of the previous workers went to war and some fled abroad for fear of being mobilized to fight. The influx of migrants also decreased.
A symptom of a lack of workers is that the same factory often simultaneously offers a number of vacancies in a single profession. For example, Kurganmašzavod, which produces infantry fighting vehicles, was looking for 78 machine adjusters as of September 4. He also needs 70 turners, to whom he offers from 70 to 150 thousand rubles (about 16,680 to 35,740 crowns).
For comparison, the maximum for an engineer-technologist is 100 thousand rubles (23,830 crowns).
In some cases, companies try to solve the problem by training specialists. Tulamašzavod, which produces infantry and naval weapons, launched courses for blue-collar professions, specifically CNC machine operators. At the Poljot plant in Ivanovo, where parachutes are sewn, they offer to train seamstresses. This year, companies offered 1,100 places for apprentices for turners, grinders, millers and welders, which is almost twice as many as last year, said expert Natalja Daninová.
Teaching apprentices is far from the only way to deal with the fact that they are not human. There is at least one known case in Chelyabinsk where employees of a tractor factory, drafted into the army for a year’s compulsory service, stayed at the factory to work on fulfilling state defense contracts. The authorities apparently want to make this practice possible by law, there is a proposal in parliament that will allow conscripts to work in armories as an alternative to serving in the army.
One of the most effective ways to solve the problem is, at least in the short term, to attract workers from other regions to company dormitories; the number of such jobs increased by 460,500 in all sectors in the first half of this year, Daninová said. Compared to the same period last year, this was an increase of 32 percent. Those interested are offered earnings, the median of which is 152 thousand rubles, which is 30 percent more than a year ago.
The highest salaries, from 200 thousand rubles per month, are offered to turners and CNC machine operators for work in another place. Sometimes it is enough to commute to a big city or to a neighboring region. Even an apprentice turner at the Energomash company in Moscow earns 50 to 80 thousand rubles, which corresponds to the salary of an experienced turner at the Kalashnikov armory in Izhevsk.
Newcomers have to get used to hard work without proper weekends. In some advertisements, it is expected to work six or seven days a week, in shifts lasting up to 11 hours. If there is a rare time off, the company entices you to work more with additional bonuses. But even such overtime is in accordance with the law. Enterprises working to fulfill state defense contracts have the right to demand overtime from workers every day even without their consent. Working hours may not exceed 12 hours.
When examining the offers in detail, it is also clear that the armories are not offering large payouts to workers for a standard 40 hours of work per week, but for a commitment that can last up to 60 days continuously. In such a case, they will receive from 150,000 to 200,000 rubles per month.
Despite the obvious need for manpower in the armories, the salaries offered are not growing as fast as the salaries offered by the Russian army.