in 2021 rose to 74,000, while the unemployment rate hit a record low of 0.2% of the working-age population. Nasenya added that Belarussian farmers are finding it hard to recruit workers which, in his opinion, could be met by attracting foreigners. Anna Sergienko, marketing manager of Poultry Ukraine, is less downbeat. She stated that she was not aware of any Ukrainian poultry company with a shortage of workers. However, Ukraine is at the forefront in terms of migration in Eastern Europe. In the first ten months of 2021, 600,000 Ukrainians left the country – the highest figure ever, the State Statistical Service estimated. Between 2010 and 2020, as many as 2.6 million citizens moved out of the country, constituting nearly 10% of the country’s overall workforce.
Changing labour conditions Galina Bobyleva, chairperson of the Russian Union of poultry producers, said that managers of poultry farms need to de- sign some tools to attract workers. Raising wages is a sure bet, in her view. With an average monthly salary in a Russian industrial poultry farm amounting to 50,000 rubles (US$ 700) maximum, compared to 90,000 rubles (US$ 1,200) in food de- livery, there is still ample room to attract people. At least in theory. A source in a local poultry company commented that in 2022 most companies in the Eurasia Union would have to raise wages by 20% in order to keep staff, especially on farms located close to big cities where there is some competition for workers. The source noted that wages had already gone up by 20% since the beginning of the pandemic. In September of 2020, Russian poultry farmers asked the Ag- ricultural Ministry to amend labour legislation by lowering
payments on staff so that they could secure additional funds to raise salaries. At the same time, the Russian Labour Minis- try announced plans to try and attract more immigrants to work in agriculture. The Ministry estimated that in 2022 the share of immigrants in the Russian poultry industry could be close to 50%. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia hosted as many as 12 million labour migrants, primarily from Central Asia: Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. During the first lockdowns in May 2020, a significant propor- tion of them moved back home expecting to return within a few weeks. The following termination of the flight connection with Central Asia took them by surprise.
Prospects gloomy These labour market problems may have been exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic but they are expected to last longer, which means poultry farmers must brace themselves for worsening conditions in the years to come. It is believed that the current crisis in Eastern Europe is associated with a what is termed a ‘demographic pit’. The Russian Academy of Science projected that the working age population in Russia would shrink by 7 million by 2030. This demographic pit is not confined just to Russia, as it is also seen in other former communist states: Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. The working populations of Central and Eastern European countries — with the exception of Turkey — are expected to decrease significantly over the next 30 years, driven by low or negative net birth rates and outward migration, as shown by research conducted by the International Monetary Fund in 2019. Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia and Ukraine are likely to lose up to a third of their working-age population during that period.
▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 2, 2022
“Today, slaugh- terhouses and processing facili- ties especially, have workforce issues. The farm- ing sector has been affected by this issue to a lesser extent,” said Sergey Lakhtyukhov, general director of the Russian Union of Poultry Farmers.
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