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- There is a problem: the shortage of personnel in the food industry was estimated at 2.5 million people
There is a problem: the shortage of personnel in the food industry was estimated at 2.5 million people
About a third of the employees in the food industry are missing, analysts believe that the deficit already stands at 2.5 million people. Recruitment services confirm that the shortage of personnel in the food industry is growing rapidly — in the third quarter of 2025 alone, the number of vacancies in this industry increased by 56% compared to the same period last year. Young people do not seek to enter the field because of uncompetitive salaries and low prestige of the profession, experts say.
Who is missing in the food industry
The shortage of personnel in the Russian food industry may amount to 2.5 million people, analysts at the Start Quality consulting company estimate. They note that the industry lacks about 30% of its employees. The calculation formula, as explained to Izvestia in the company, includes data on the number of enterprises in the food industry, data on the average number of employees and the market growth rate.
"The crisis is systemic," said Konstantin Derevskov, CEO of Start Quality, a lecturer at the Russian University of Biotechnology (Rosbiotech), and an expert on food safety. — Specialized universities and technical schools annually graduate about 25-35 thousand specialists, but this is catastrophically insufficient. And only 40% of graduates come to work in their specialty, the rest leave the industry without working a day.
He said that a large retail chain recently applied to the specialized department of Rosbiotech with a request for employment of 80 students, while only 40 students are enrolled in the course.
— And during the academic year, our Employment Center receives similar requests for hiring from three to 10 enterprises, which also indicates that there is a shortage of personnel already at the stage of training specialists, — he said. — Moreover, up to five employers can apply for one graduate.
According to the expert, there are not enough mechanics, technologists, experts, managers, engineers and line staff. The shortage of engineering personnel is particularly acute.
— I would put mechanics first. The equipment is currently being updated, and not everyone is able to work with it. There is also a lack of logistics, quality specialists and those who can build processes," he said.
At the same time, the shortage of workers in the food industry alone, according to him, can be estimated at 250 thousand employees. We are talking about unskilled personnel (employees without special education), these are handymen, loaders, line operators, and boning workers.
The Ministry of Labor has not previously reported data on the shortage of specialists in the food industry. But Minister of Labor and Social Protection Anton Kotyakov, speaking at the government hour in the State Duma in November 2024, said that "the staffing requirement by 2030 is at least 2.4 million people," but it was about the entire labor market. Experts then interpreted the minister's words as an additional need for the market. Izvestia sent a request to the Ministry of Labor with a request to evaluate the calculations of analysts.
According to the Avito Rabota recruitment service, the category of "kitchen and food production workers" showed a 7% increase in the number of vacancies in the first three quarters of 2025 compared to last year. And this is the only category in the top 7 in the third quarter that showed an increase in the number of vacancies, while the rest (drivers and couriers, retail workers, builders and repairmen, warehouse workers) showed a decline. This is stated in the quarterly digest of the HR platform.
As calculated by this recruitment service for Izvestia, in the third quarter, the need for food production workers was 56% higher compared to the same period last year.
The All-Russian Research Institute of Labor, in response to a request from Izvestia, reported that the staffing needs of the food industry include not only industry-specific specialties, but also professions related to ensuring the operational, administrative, and organizational work of enterprises.
"For example, these are accounting specialists, handymen, economists, lawyers, IT specialists, movers, logisticians, and so on," they said. — In total, about 50 thousand vacancies have been opened in the food industry in total in all regions of the country.
According to the All-Russian Research Institute of Labor, a total of 30.3 thousand companies and 35.7 thousand individual entrepreneurs work in the industry. The total number of employees employed in the food industry is about 1.9 million people, including over 160,000 processors and manufacturers of meat, fish and other food products, about 35,000 manufacturers of dairy products, over 200,000 operators of machines for processing food and similar products.
—The food industry is an important industry, and much attention is paid to its staffing," they said. — It is necessary to separate the issues of competition for specialists whose work is applicable in all fields, and specialists whose professions are specific.
The Institute of Labor noted that the industry is characterized by a high average age of employees, "which ensures future demand for specialists and makes this area, like many other areas of manufacturing, promising for employment."
The All-Russian Research Institute added that the list of 360 most sought-after professions in which you can retrain for free under the national project "Personnel" includes such specialties as a food industry technologist, an equipment and thermal equipment adjuster, a line operator, and a product controller. In addition, the issues of increasing labor productivity are relevant for the industry.
How much do they pay
The food industry is suffering due to competition for personnel with other sectors of the economy - logistics, military—industrial complex, IT and retail, which often offer more attractive working conditions, analysts said.
According to Avito Rabota, the largest increase in the number of vacancies was noted in the positions of receptionists (engaged in the acceptance, weighing and primary processing of raw materials and products) — the number of offers for them has more than doubled (+118%), the average salary offer was 61 462 rubles per month.
In the second place in terms of the dynamics of the number of vacancies are semi—finished products sculptors (+100%). The average salary offer for this position is 130,000 rubles per month. Couriers also entered the top 3 (+88%), they can count on an average salary of 75,936 rubles per month in the food sector.
The specialty of the meat producer became the leader in terms of growth — the average salary offer for this profession increased by 61% compared to the same period last year and amounted to 99,234 rubles per month. The chef's specialty came in second place with an average salary offer of 142,688 rubles per month (+61%). The average salary for technologists also increased by 42%, to 101,042 rubles per month.
"The food industry continues to grow and develop, including due to the growing demand for ready—made food," said Andrey Kucherenkov, Director of the Avito Jobs category of Workers and Linear Professions. — Retail chains, by scaling their own productions and expanding the range of culinary products, create a huge demand for qualified personnel. Therefore, companies actively compete for the best specialists, offering more attractive salary conditions.
In the recruitment service hh.ru They noted that there is a shortage of the industry and IT specialists, demand is stable, and growth in the third quarter was 2% compared to the second quarter. The median salary offered in the food industry for IT specialists reaches 97.9 thousand rubles (an increase of 9% over the year). In general, the average salary in the food industry is only 74.3 thousand. Over the year, this figure increased by 6%.
How to close the shortage of employees
It is possible to solve the personnel issue in the food industry if universities and secondary specialized educational institutions graduate at least 300 specialists per year, who will subsequently work in one of the branches of the food industry, Konstantin Derevskov believes.
However, the transition to robotic equipment will also save the situation, although not to the full extent.
"For example, we can already see that electronic food safety magazines double the productivity of a bakery employee, and there are dozens of such simple digital solutions that can optimize the work of enterprises," he said.
However, in his opinion, robotization and digitalization of enterprises in the future will not affect the reduction in the number of vacancies, rather, the functionality will be adjusted and redistributed to positions in accordance with technological development, as previously baking specialists were replaced by bakery technologists with modern technologies. But automation and robotics can compensate for the shortage in monotonous operations, and the introduction of neural networks can optimize logistics and management.
Olga Zhiltsova, Associate Professor of the Department of Logistics at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, confirmed that technologists, agronomists, machine operators, veterinarians, and breeders are in high demand in the food industry.
— The reasons for the shortage, first of all, are demographic problems, heavy physical labor, seasonal fluctuations, lack of prestige of the profession, infrastructure and comfort in rural areas, low wages for line staff, high outflow of qualified personnel from rural areas, — she said. — In the context of import substitution, the agricultural market in Russia grew rapidly, production capacities increased, but labor resources did not increase, thus the bias began to form several years ago.
She also stated that the problem was aggravated by the intensification of the process of digitalization and innovation, which, in turn, led to increased demands on specialists.
— You can already see a combine harvester driver with a higher technical education, because modern technology is packed with electronics and sophisticated IT technologies. By the way, such equipment requires both setup and maintenance specialists and developers of Russian software for complex agricultural machinery," she said.
Among the measures to address the shortage of personnel in the food industry, the expert suggested strengthening efforts to create attractive working conditions, increase the prestige of working professions, and work out measures to reward complexity, advanced training, and overall specialized education.
And Maria Koleda, head of the information department of the independent trade union Novy Trud, said that the reasons for the shortage were the mass exodus of personnel to other sectors.
"People who worked for years as cooks, bakers, and order pickers for meager salaries have gone into other professions and forms of employment," she said. — The food industry, with its outdated factory rules, rigid schedules and low pay, has lost this competition for human resources.
In addition, according to her, the industry has been supported for decades by the influx of relatively cheap labor, including migrant workers.
— Now these sources are drying up or becoming less accessible. The food industry, which traditionally depends on a large amount of manual labor, finds itself among the outsiders in the struggle for dwindling human capital. And young people do not see prospects in professions related to low—paid manual labor in food production," she said.
In addition, according to the expert, businesses in the food industry are often not ready to adequately respond to the challenges of the times: instead of drastically increasing salaries and investing in automation and improving working conditions, companies prefer to "patch holes" by shifting the burden on the remaining employees. As long as labor in the food industry is considered low-skilled and low-paid, the shortage will only worsen, Maria Koleda believes.
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