Moscow ups jobless level

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin may have declared that Russia has exited the recession, but city authorities have just announced that they are raising the target numbers for Moscow's unemployment levels. As part of a special project to ease pressure on the employment market, City Hall set a goal this year of keeping unemployment to under 1 per cent of the working population. Next year's target has been raised to 1.4 per cent.
"In creating the project agreed for 2010, we took into account we were formulating it during a difficult period of time and that unemployment may rise somewhat," said Alexander Chistyakov, chairman of the city's Public Relations Committee.
He said at the present time, unemployment in the city stood at 0.91 per cent, meaning the authorities were on target for 2009.
"This year we set a goal of not letting unemployment rise above 1 per cent of the economically active population and we succeeded in doing this," said Chistyakov.
The head of the committee added that since January 2009, the city had managed to reduce a deficit in the regular labour force despite difficult economic conditions.
"As of Jan. 1, the labour force deficit stood at 22,000 people and in September that had fallen to 18,000 people," said Chistyakov.
At the same time, he said that to completely eliminate the regular labour force deficit, the city needed to retrain about 25,000 people.
"You could say that the crisis reduced the regular labour force deficit, but all the same it still exists," added Chistyakov.