The Labour Potential of Older Generation: Interregional Analysis

Abstract

The article is devoted to the labor potential of the older generation, which is considered from the theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives. The relevance of studying the labor of the elderly is associated with the search for an employment reserve in the context of a shrinking working-age population and demographic aging. The concept of "labor potential" has been developed since the 1980s, as a result, the existing approaches to this concept can be divided into descriptive (data description) and transformative (using indices). The transformative approach based on the concept of ISESP RAS and VolRC RAS was adapted for the study of the older generation and for the RLMS database. The concept is based on a “tree of characteristics” (a set of indices), the top of which is “social capacity” (labor potential). To calculate the labor potential, it was necessary to select the available variables in the RLMS questionnaire, the peculiarity of which made it possible to add indices of an active lifestyle and network involvement and at the same time it forced to abandon the indices of creativity, cultural level, and moral level. The calculations made allow us to classify Tomsk, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Novosibirsk region, Vladivostok among the regions with the highest labor potential. The next step was associated with a comparison of the regions with the highest and lowest labor potential, which revealed the main markers (criteria for regional differentiation of the labor potential of the elderly): 1) intellectual potential (participation in educational programs over the previous 12 months, level of education, foreign language skills), 2 ) communicative potential (trust in people in general, management, colleagues and the level of computer skills), as well as the level of employment (regions with a high level of employment of the elderly are characterized by a high labor potential in the older generation). The hypothesis that the gender composition of the region may act as an additional marker was not confirmed, however, the analysis of the age specifics revealed a higher labor potential of the elderly in women than in men.