REGULATING EMPLOYMENT IN MONOCITIES: FOREIGN EXPERIENCE AND RUSSIAN PRACTICE

This paper explores a set of criterial approaches that make it possible to subsume municipal units as monocities. The authors have compared several categories of single-industry municipal units (monocities) based on the risk to the socio-economic situation in them and employment and unemployment rates in their labor markets. The work employs the findings from Russian and foreign research on issues of state regulation of monocities. The authors have analyzed the related experience of certain developed nations. The study's methodological instrumentarium includes analysis of statistical sources, logical substantiation, and forecasting. The study has found that over the last three years the largest concentrations of monocities in Russia have been associated with the following two groups: single-industry municipal units (monocities) that may be at risk of the socio-economic situation in them worsening and singleindustry municipal units with a recessionary socio-economic situation in them. The paper brings forward a set of conceptual approaches to regulating socio-economic development in Russian monocities. The authors propose three major approaches to the development of monocities in Russia – (1) inertial; (2) scenario of bailing the backbone enterprise out; (3) scenario of closing it down. Based on the study's forecasting information, all of the categories of monocities are exhibiting a trend toward decline in employed residents. That being said, this trend has been most prominent with the category of cities with a stable socio-economic situation, which is testimony to not only a worsening situation in these areas but a general negative trend in development at the level of the national economy as well. The study's practical findings could be utilized in helping regional authorities develop measures to reduce precarious employment in monocities.