The city will stop paying unemployment benefits to those who have twice refused job placements found for them by government employment agencies, a top official said Monday.
Those refusing to attend professional training could face a loss of benefits as well, Moscow labor department head Oleg Neterebsky said, Interfax reported.
The number of registered unemployed in the country fell to 2.14 million, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said Monday.
There are almost 58,000 registered unemployed in Moscow, the city’s labor department said last month.
But a jump in the number of jobless is expected in the fall, a time when people traditionally turn to state employment agencies, Zhukov said.
Cutting unemployment benefits after repeated rejections of job offers is common in most of Europe, experts said.
But “the level of jobs offered by state employment centers [in Russia] is usually very low, and this leads to a high number of rejections,” said Sergei Guriyev, rector of the New Economic School.
Unemployment benefits in Moscow range from 850 rubles ($27) to 4,500 rubles ($142) per month. The average payment is just over 2,700 rubles.
Other unemployment benefits include money for public transportation and compensation in the event of a death in the unemployed person’s family.
Some unemployed workers use the benefits as an opportunity to earn extra cash while still holding down an unofficial job, said Ilya Paramonov, an independent analyst.
“[The new measures] are a way of bringing about more discipline,” he said.
In April, Neterebsky complained that the city was having difficulty paying out unemployment benefits because of a lack of funds. The state has allocated 500 million rubles ($15 million) for unemployment benefits in Moscow.
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