"Lukashenko Is Going For Desperate Measures."

• 14.03.2026, 9:55

The economy is suffocating from lack of manpower and the dictator's problems will only grow.

The authorities see that Belarusian enterprises do not have enough workers. Prime Minister Alexander Turchin explained it by the declining birth rate and aging of the population in our country. It is suggested to solve this problem by a more flexible mechanism of personnel recruitment, as well as by involving pupils, students and pensioners in labor activity.

Economic observer Andrei Mahovsky explained "Salidarnasts" why these ideas are desperate measures of the authorities, which are unlikely to help solve the problem of staff shortage.

- This is all spelled out in the concept of labor market development until 2030. There is an idea to hire "persons with incomplete qualifications". What does this mean? There is, let's say, a fitter who has studied and knows the profession, knows all the processes from start to finish. And here they will take a person who will be taught to do one specific operation at the factory," says Makhovsky.

This is an absolutely bad way to solve the problem, because, for example, a person was taught to screw on a nut, and then the technology has changed a bit, and this worker is no longer suitable.

All this is from the category of desperate measures. The situation in the labor market of Belarus is catastrophic, and even according to the estimates of the Ministry of Labor, the shortage of labor force by 2030 will be about 300 thousand people. This is a huge number. Therefore, they come up with some ways to reduce the problem to the extent of their imagination.

Last year, pensioners were involved in the work, when it was decided that working pensioners would be able to receive a full pension. But everyone who wanted to work is already working, they will not be involved anymore.

Now they will involve young people. Maybe it will be a couple of tens of thousands of people, but it will not solve the catastrophic problem. And there are two reasons for this problem: the first one is bad demography (it is worse only in Ukraine, where there is a war), and the second one was created by the authorities with their own hands, when they squeezed hundreds of thousands of Belarusians out of the country.

The situation in the labor market could have worsened gradually, but because a huge number of people left, it has deteriorated sharply. There is the only way to solve this problem - to do something so that Belarusians would want to return home. And as soon as possible, because the more time passes, the less people will want to return.

But the authorities cannot and do not want to do it - political stability is more expensive than anything else, so they have to resort to such palliative measures.