Impact of COVID-19 on the Russian Labor Market: Comparative Analysis of the Physical and Informational Spread of the Coronavirus

The aim of the article is to investigate the impact of the new coronavirus infection on the Russian labor market and to suppose the actions to be taken to minimize negative economic consequences. The distinctiveness of this study is the differentiation of the impact of the physical and informational spread of COVID-19. The informational spread of coronavirus is measured through the dynamics of news messages related to the topic of “coronavirus” in the largest Russian media. The analysis of the average level of wages by type of economic activity, as well as the demand of employers and the number of vacancies, allow testing the hypothesis that the physical and informational spread of coronavirus caused an increase in the number of unemployed, a decrease in average wages in the studied range of economic activities, an increase in supply on the labor market, and a decrease in demand for employees. Another task of the study is to assess the dynamics of related search queries in Yandex (Russian biggest search engine), which can help to reveal the logic in the behavior of the Russian people during the pandemic as well as to understand if the Russian economy, the labor market, and society were prepared for the changes caused by the pandemic. Using a regression modeling methodology, it was found that the influence of the information environment, namely the informational spread of coronavirus, had an even greater impact on studied parameters than the physical spread. A “delay effect of physical consequences” was discovered. The conclusions obtained showed that in the conditions of wide informatization of society, it is necessary to systematically influence the physical and informational spread of coronavirus to minimize the negative consequences of the pandemic on the labor market.