More than 4 million Russians -- a little less than the population of St. Petersburg -- earn their living in unregistered businesses and services that pay no taxes, Labor Minister Gennady Melikyan said Friday.


But while such unofficial moneymaking would have been labeled a black market only a few years ago, Melikyan said that the "informal economy" benefits the nation and should be encouraged.


"The informal economy has softened the unemployment problem," Melikyan told reporters. "Some people sell things in the metro, others wash windows."


Melikyan said 4 to 4.5 million people work in the unofficial economy, a figure he called normal in a country where capital and office space are scarce and racketeers never far away. "A strict tax system would force them to go further underground. We have to create conditions so that this sphere will develop normally."


He described the overall job market in Russia as "rather complicated, but in no way a catastrophe." The average official salary across the country is about 280,000 rubles a month ($107), he said. The highest official salaries are found in the oil and gas business, hovering around 800,000 rubles a month.


The lowest pay is in agriculture and machine building, where salaries are as low as 50,000 rubles a month, he said.


About 1.5 million Russians receive some form of unemployment assistance, 70 percent of them women or the young, he said. A total of 4.5 million people are classified as unemployed, up from 4 million in April.