Maxim Oreshkin: Russia's economic growth should be based on increasing labor productivity

The development of the Russian economy in the current situation should be achieved by increasing productivity and quality of labor, and not by increasing the number of employed people, Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Maxim Oreshkin told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the Valdai international discussion club.

“From the point of view of economic development, there is no such easy opportunity to ensure growth by involving unemployed people in economic activity. This means that growth should not be quantitative in nature, in the current situation, but qualitative. This means improvement, increased efficiency, labor productivity,” Oreshkin said.

According to this, new technological solutions will help with this: automation, robotization, artificial intelligence, digitalization.

“All these topics are on the government’s agenda. The government has plans for these changes, through these structural changes it is necessary to implement further economic movements forward. I repeat once again: qualitative changes are important, not quantitative ones,” Oreshkin emphasized.

He noted that Russian unemployment is now the lowest among the world's largest countries. “In this regard, this speaks to the stability of the labor market. And this, of course, is great, because the lower the unemployment, the better opportunities people have in terms of fulfillment at work, growing wages, this is a very good stable situation,” Oreshkin added.