As winter vacations expand to envelop both the New Year and Orthodox Christmas, some Moscow workers are treading a fine line between holiday spirit and unemployment.


This year, as last, the Russian government has given the nod to resurging Orthodox Christianity by declaring Jan. 9 an official government holiday, along with Jan. 2 and 3. Individual workplaces all over the city have supplemented this with Jan. 7 or Dec. 31. For many Muscovites, this means a small constellation of work days in an expanse of vacation. For workers in some cash-strapped industries, it means two weeks of unpaid leave.


"For some people, the time off is a good thing. For others, it's bad," said Mikhail Nagaitsev, the president of the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions. "In a normal economic situation, where they can pay your salary, fine."


Tell that to the workers at Moscow's First Watch Factory, or the Crayon Factory, or the Biryulevskaya Meat Processing Plant.


For the 300,000 Moscow workers on unpaid leave, the extra vacation is a smokescreen for a temporary shutdown, Nagaitsev suggested. Although the capital city's statistics are healthy compared to the rest of the country -- where the federation estimates that 2 million Russians are on leave without pay -- the extra time off is not a straightforward bonus, he said.


"Officially, we work Wednesday, Thursday and Friday," said Alexandra Fedarchuk, a spokeswoman for the Russian Federation Labor Ministry. "Unofficially, it depends on who has enough money to pay the salaries. If they have the money, they work." Russia's unemployment rate hovers around 2.6 percent of the work force, according to official statistics, but a real picture of unemployment must take into account the millions of Russians on unpaid leave.


A study by the International Labor Organization, released last September, estimated that more than one-third of Russia's labor pool is in "suppressed unemployment," which means they have jobs without actual work or pay.


Light industry -- manufacturers of crayons or pencils, for instance -- are most likely to stall business at the end of the year, said a representative of the Grocers' Union.


The holiday season looks rosier for the food and beverage businesses. Milk and bread factories do not slow down their assembly lines for Christmas, and the employees of Moscow's Kristall vodka factory may not get their state-mandated three days either, said factory director Vladimir Yamnikov, who described the New Year as "a particularly active season for us."