According to market players, Russian sporting goods retail is hit by a persistent labor shortage. Sportmaster, the largest Russian sporting goods retailer, “undoubtedly experiences a lack of workers,” Valentina Vatrak, Head of Sportmaster’s HR department, has told a local news outlet, Retail. Although she claimed the company is staffed 100 percent, there is an acute shortage of personnel, especially visible in the logistics segment. She explained that Sportmaster has heavily invested in brand recognition in the past few years.
“Since the shortage of line employees in stores was predictable, we developed an action program in advance,” Vatrak said, explaining that thanks to the positive public image, the company manages to attract young people to work in the company. “People who come to us to work in retail are passionate about sports; they like to involve others in sports and purchase high-quality sports goods for themselves.”
Vetrak revealed that the average age of personnel working in the Sportmaster sporting goods stores is 22, while in logistics, it is close to 40. “These are completely different people, and they need a different approach. So, we have not yet coped with the [labor] crisis in logistics,” she admitted.
The Russian retail industry has been complaining about the negative impact of the persisting labor shortage in recent years. This intensified in 2023. Some retailers even stated that the lack of personnel prevented them from launching new stores and forced them to raise salaries to keep staff intact. In fact, Russia is believed to be grappling with some of the worst labor crises in its history. The country lacks around 5 million workers, the Economy Institute under the Russian Academy of Science said in a study published in December 2023. The analysts have not explained the reason for the shortage. It is usually attributed to a mix of weak demographics and massive emigration in the last two years. The Russian economy has almost completely exhausted the available labor resources and is left without free hands, Elvira Nabiullina, Head of the Russian Central Bank, said during a State Duma meeting in November 2023.
