Vocational Education and Training of Russian Employees

A well-developed system of vocational education and training (VET) is a prerequisite for sustainable economic growth, and it is becoming even more important because of technological and structural changes in the Russian economy, labor shortages, and a persistent imbalance between the supply and demand for labor. The article employs the Labor Force Survey to analyze various types of workbased VET. Although the average percentage of workers who have completed vocational education (27.1% in 2023) is comparable to that of European countries, VET in Russia is mostly limited to training in occupational safety and health. Other kinds of instruction, such as short-term courses and trainings, professional development and retraining programs, and the study of new technologies, are much less common and reach no more than 11% of workers. The number of participants in VET and the training they undergo vary considerably from one industry or occupation to another. Occupational safety and health training is nearly the only kind provided in manufacturing industries for both skilled and unskilled workers. The other types of VET are most common in industries that require more intellectual skills (education, healthcare, finance and insurance, information and communications, professional and scientific employment) and among specialists. The main determinants of participation in VET revealed by applying logit regression are occupational and industry factors along with the nature of labor relations. Restricting vocational training to occupational safety and health (especially for manual labor) coupled with a paucity of other training aimed at the renewal of skills and acquisition of new competencies may hinder Russia in its attempt to advance the technical and technological modernization of its economy, overcome its labor shortage, and increase labor productivity. Those goals require reforms in the way continuing occupational education is carried out.