Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Shokhin said Wednesday he expected the country's decline in industrial output to slow by the end of this year but unemployment to grow to between 3.6 and 4 percent of the workforce.


"Hidden unemployment is also expected to rise," he wrote in Izvestia newspaper.


The government Center for Economic Analysis said this week that 1.5 percent of the workforce, or 1.26 million people, were registered as jobless in June.


Shokhin gave no detailed forecast for industrial output, which according to the State Statistics Committee fell almost 26 percent in the first half of 1994 compared with the same period last year.


He said total investment in the Russian economy this year was forecast at 100-110 trillion rubles ($49-54 billion).


He gave no comparison to previous years.


Living standards should not fall since inflation was slowing, social security improving and small enterprises developing, he said.


Russian monthly inflation dropped to 5 percent in June from 21 percent in January.


"The predicted collapse of the economy did not take place. We are not looking at the economy through rose-tinted spectacles," the deputy prime minister said.