If anything there is an oversupply of graduate school graduates. The shortages are at the level of machinists and skilled manual labor. The positions they cant fill are the ones for welders at shipyards, CNC operators, tool and die makers, etc…
They still graduate more engineers than they can employ. Hence why engineers flee to banking and finance. The technical school system however has largely decayed into nothing while the elite universities have probably never been healthier.
The Russian military industrial sector suffers from VERY poor labor efficiency. They staff 4x more engineers on programs (seriously 4x and not 2x or some saner number) than we do in the West. The phantom job is still very much a problem in the Russian military industrial sector. Ever watch the Sopranos? No show jobs exist at Sukhoi. In fact, at various UAC subsidiaries no-show jobs can account for as much as 18-25% of the payroll — this is what happens when the government is your only shareholder.
Klimov in particular was suffering from this a lot a year or two ago when they started building their new factory and winding down operations at the old plant. It became very much apparent that 1/3 of their staff never actually showed for work.
They have a lot of grad students and recent graduates on payroll who never show up. They work elsewhere and kick a % of their “factory” salary up to managers to keep them on staff. They want the name of a major arms maker on their resume, but they make more money working in finance or writing code or whatever.
Salaries in the military industrial sector would be MUCH higher if this phantom job system didnt exist.
Median age stats have been improving across industries in Russia. The brain drain problem is still real but nowhere near as bad as it once was. Unfortunately, this is mostly because economies in Europe have imploded and getting work in the US is harder than getting work in Russia now. With 4% growth at home, if you have any entrepreneurial drive you dont flee to economies that are doing much worse.
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