Dmitry Medvedev visited the Stroginsky Employment Centre and held a meeting on employment issues

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Mascow,,

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PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Good afternoon,

We are meeting today – those of you responsible for the labour market in our country and in Moscow, and those of you who have come here – to discuss what is probably one of our most complicated problems: the issue of jobs and unemployment. Since the labour market situation started to worsen at the end of 2008, the Government has been paying this issue a lot of attention, and took a number of important measures. This does not mean that every step taken was successful, but, having looked into the state of affairs in practically all of the different regions, not just in Moscow, I see that the employment support system that was established in 2008 and 2009 is working now. This system encompasses retraining, and also the unemployment benefits the law has set.

Overall, the situation is looking up this year compared to last, and this is an objective fact. The national unemployment rate has dropped, and dropped considerably too. In fact, it is now close to the pre-crisis level. These figures reflect the overall situation but not the individual tragedies, however, because it is individuals who lose their jobs, and we then have to find new employment for each of these individuals.

Moscow has employment programmes up and running too. As I understand it, the situation in Moscow is fairly calm as far as the number of registered unemployed is concerned. It is less than one percent, isn’t it, something like 0.7 percent? If we use the ILO’s calculation method, what would be the unemployment level in Moscow, the same as the national level, or lower?