Personnel collapse in Russia: Kremlin seeks workers among children, prisoners and migrants

Government measures do not increase the total number of working-age population.

The Russian Federation is experiencing one of the most acute personnel crises in its modern history, which has already become a serious threat to the country’s military economy.

According to Foreign Policy , the labor shortage is due to demographic decline, mass emigration after the start of a full-scale war against Ukraine, and the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of men, while automation and digitalization, which could compensate for the labor shortage, are developing too slowly. According to estimates, Russia already lacks 1.5 to 2.5 million workers, and by 2030 it will be necessary to attract another 10.9 million people to the labor market, mainly to replace those who retire.

The defense industry is particularly acutely experiencing a shortage of personnel. The military-industrial complex alone lacks 400-500 thousand workers, including more than 100 thousand engineers and other highly qualified specialists. At the same time, the need for drone specialists is growing rapidly: if the civilian sector currently lacks about 14.5 thousand such workers, then over the next decade the demand may increase to 300 thousand people. At the same time, even the Russian Ministry of Defense is not fulfilling its own plans for training drone operators: in the first half of 2026, the ministry trained a little more than 8,000 drone specialists, which is about a quarter of the planned figure of 34,400 people for this period.

In response, the Kremlin is trying to expand its domestic labor reserves. To this end, the government is encouraging young people to enter the labor market earlier, reducing the number of state-funded places in universities, and even supporting proposals to lower the minimum age for employment from 14 to 12 (a step that may contradict the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child). In addition, Russia continues to reduce the list of professions prohibited for women, and defense enterprises are actively cooperating with technical schools and universities, training future workers while they are still studying.

However, experts note that these steps only partially compensate for the shortage of personnel and do not increase the total number of working-age population. On the contrary, they may negatively affect the quality of education and human capital, as well as further intensify competition between the civilian economy and military production for the same specialists, primarily in the field of information technology.

The Kremlin considered prisoners as another source of labor, but this resource is almost exhausted. After the start of a full-scale war, thousands of convicts were drafted into the army, which reduced the number of prisoners in the country by about 40% in less than five years. At the same time, the Federal Penitentiary Service itself is also suffering from an acute shortage of personnel, and in many regions, colonies had to be closed due to a lack of people.

Moscow is making a special effort to attract foreign workers. Russia has begun to more actively recruit labor migrants not only from Central Asian countries, but also from India, North Korea, China, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, and is also trying to use the occupied territories of Ukraine as a source of labor.

However, this strategy is increasingly encountering internal resistance. After the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert hall in March 2024, anti-migrant sentiment in Russia sharply intensified. The authorities began to adopt increasingly strict migration restrictions: simplified deportation procedures, limited the possibility of moving migrant families, and tightened control over their employment and education of children. Against this background, the number of foreigners living in Russia decreased by 10% between January 2025 and January 2026, and the number of migrant workers on construction sites decreased by 15–20%.

It is noted that measures taken in response to the personnel crisis are exacerbating the problem rather than solving it.

“Measures such as early entry of students into the workforce, expanding the role of women, and attempts to revive the use of prison labor do little to increase Russia’s labor pool. Instead, they merely redistribute an already scarce labor force. Meanwhile, attempts to increasingly rely on foreign workers are increasingly being met with rising nationalist sentiment and restrictive migration policies,” the publication writes.

(C)UNIAN 2026