Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2016 number

The article considers changes in the labor force in Siberia reflecting the evolution of the role of demographic factors in the economic development of Asian Russia in the late XIX - early XXI century. For this purpose, it describes the main trends in the quantitative dynamics of regional human resource capacity and the working component; analyzes and rates the overall annual increase in the age group of inhabitants of the macro-region of 15 to 59 years in the period between censuses, due to the magnitude and specificity of combination of the three processes - fertility, mortality and migration. The research is based on the dynamic series of indicators (number and proportion of people of working age) provided by the materials of the population censuses conducted in 1897, 1926, 1939, and from 1959 to 2010. The results of analysis of the vast array of statistical census data correlated with rapidly changing demographics which indirectly affected the functioning of the productive forces in the eastern regions of the country. As a result, it was concluded that from the late XIX to late XX century one of the key factors in the agricultural and industrial development of Siberia was a steady expansion of the working population in the region. During this period, the reproductive potential of the regional society contributed to the growth of the total workforce essential to the recovery of the Siberian economy. This potential declined at the beginning of the XXI century. It caused a reduction in manpower which became one of the main results of the long-term transition of the Russian society from the extended (traditional) to the narrowed (modern) type of reproduction of population. The “demographic echo” of this transition which is still felt today in the economy became the main obstacle to modernization of the Russian society in the XX century.