Russia’s immigration crackdown could end up delivering another serious blow to its economy, with the nation already suffering from a severe shortage of workers.The Kremlin has signaled it will tighten restrictions on migrants coming into Russia, after a terrorist attack at a Moscow concert killed over 140 people and injured more than 100. Russian authorities said some of the attackers were found to have expired immigration papers, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Lawmakers are now working to pass new rules that require migrants to register a digital profile with biometric data in order to work in Russia. The nation, meanwhile, has seen a surge in deportation activity, with St. Petersburg courts ordering 466 migrants to leave Russia since the attack, per a report from the independent Russian media outlet Meduza. Those measures could ultimately hurt Russia’s economy, which is strapped with a dire shortage of available workers. The nation’s workforce was short nearly 5 million people at the end of 2023, according to an estimate from the Russian newspaper Izvestia.Russia has likely become more dependent on migrant workers since its invasion of Ukraine, which led nearly a million of its own citizens to flee the country in 2022. The nation now has around 3.5 million to 5 million migrant workers, Bloomberg Economics estimated, though just 1.7 million are recorded in the official statistics. Economists have warned of long-term consequences of Russia’s labor shortage, which could further crimp the nation’s growth prospects as it enters its second year of war. Losing just 300,000 more workers could cut into the nation’s GDP 0.2% over the next year, Bloomberg estimated, which could also potentially stoke inflation and keep interest rates higher for longer. Those consequences are a testament to the many ways Russia has paid the price for its invasion of Ukraine, both in the present and in the future. While military spending has propped up Russia’s economy over the short-term, that can’t last forever, European researchers recently warned, predicting a much more sluggish growth trajectory for Moscow in 2024.
