In February 2026, a third of Russians expected that there would be more unemployed people in the next 12 months. After a significant reduction in 2022-2023, the number of people expecting an increase in unemployment has been steadily increasing since the beginning of 2024. At the same time, almost half of the respondents today believe that the number of unemployed will not change, and one in ten believes that it will decrease.
A third of Russians (32%) expect an increase in unemployment in the coming year. The share of respondents who believe that there will be more unemployed in the next 12 months has increased by 16 percentage points since February 2024, before that, similar values were observed in November 2022, as well as in 2004-2006. 45% of respondents think that there will be about the same number of unemployed, and that there will be fewer of them – 13% (a decrease of 14 percentage points since February 2024). The maximum unemployment expectation was recorded in January 2009 at 76%, and the minimum was a year earlier, in January 2008.
Unemployment is expected to rise most frequently by women (34%), less well-off respondents (40% of those who can barely afford food), residents of cities with a population of over 500,000 (35%), those who believe the country is heading in the wrong direction (49%), those who disapprove of the current president’s performance (51%), those whose financial situation has worsened over the past year (49%), those who predict their financial situation will worsen in the coming year (54%), those who believe that the next five years will be a difficult period for the country’s economy (54%), and those who use social media and domestic video platforms as sources of information (36% and 38% respectively).
People who say that the unemployment situation will not change in the coming months include, most frequently: respondents with a higher education (47%), those with higher incomes (48% of those who can barely afford clothes and 45% of those who can afford durable goods), Muscovites (53%), those who believe the country is heading in the right direction (51%), those who approve of the president’s performance (47%), those whose financial situation has not changed over the past year (52%), those who believe their financial situation will not change in the coming year (56%), those who believe the next five years will be neither good nor bad for the Russian economy (53%), and those who use Telegram channels as a source of information (50%).
Those who believe that the number of unemployed will fall over the next 12 months are most commonly men (17%), young people under 25 (18%), respondents with secondary education or below (15%), better-off respondents (18% of those who can afford durable goods), rural residents (16%), those who believe the country is heading in the right direction (15%), and those who approve of the president’s performance (14%), those whose financial situation has improved over the past year (24%), those who expect their financial situation to improve in the coming year (24%), those who believe that the next five years will be a good time for the country’s economy (23%), as well as entrepreneurs (18%) and managers (22%).
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[4]METHODOLOGY
The survey by the Levada Center was conducted February 18 – 25 2026, among a representative sample of all Russian urban and rural residents. The sample consisted of 1625 people aged 18 or older in 137 municipalities of 50 regions of the Russian Federation. The survey was conducted as a personal interview in respondents’ homes. The distribution of responses is given as a percentage of the total number. The data set is weighted by gender, age, level of education for each type of settlement (large cities, medium cities, small towns, villages) within each Federal district independently, in accordance with Rosstat data.
The statistical error of these studies for a sample of 1600 people (with a probability of 0.95) does not exceed:
3.4% for indicators around 50%
2.9% for indicators around 25%/75%
2.0% for indicators around 10%/90%
1.5% for indicators around 5%/95%
Learn more [5] about the methodology