Russian Labor Ministry explained that 92% of the total quota in 2026 will be allocated to skilled workers for industrial enterprises and large-scale infrastructure projects.
The remaining share will cover unskilled workers employed in harsh conditions, as well as other workers — for example veterinary sanitary staff or animal care workers. The ministry set the quota size based on requests from Russian companies.
“At the same time, in the first six months of this year employers managed to fill only a quarter of the established quota. This result continues a multi-year decline in interest in Russia from far-abroad countries,” the publication noted.
“Overall, according to the FSB, in the first half of 2025 some 5.48 million migrants came to the country for work, but most of them are citizens of former Soviet republics in Central Asia.”
Earlier, the president of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Sergey Katyrin, said that Russian companies are preparing to bring labor migrants from Nepal, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
He stressed that by attracting labor from far-abroad countries, Russian businesses — primarily in construction, retail and services — expect to solve their staffing shortages.
Russian companies have already massively started hiring labor migrants from India; their flow to Russia rose by almost 25% over the past year.
This increase followed a rise in the quota for Indians to 71.8 thousand people, The Moscow Times wrote.
In construction and services, these workers earn on average about 60% more than at home.
“The labor shortage hit Russia because of the war in Ukraine: 300,000 people were mobilized and sent to the front, another roughly 500,000 signed contracts with the Ministry of Defense to go fight, and between 600,000 and 1 million left the country,” the article said.
As previously reported, the head of Russia’s largest bank Sberbank and longtime ally of Vladimir Putin, German Gref, believes Russia needs to attract millions of skilled migrants to support the economy and reach growth rates of at least 3%.
Some Russian oblasts began recruiting labor migrants from Myanmar, one of the world’s poorest countries.