Job Creation and Job Destruction in Russia: Some Preliminary Evidence from Enterprise-level Data

We study job gross flows in Russia using large enterprise-level data sets from 1997 administrative records of firms in manufacturing and mining, construction and distribution and trade in four representative regions. We show that in 1997 small firms were the most successful at creating jobs while medium and large firms were mainly destroying them. Privatised firms fared no better than state-owned ones whilst new private firms outperformed firms with other ownership type as far as job creation is concerned. However, much of this superior performance seemed to have been related to labour market entry.