Assessment of the variability of the demand and supply of professional skills in Russian regions

The article considers the variability of the demand and supply of professional skills in the context of the regions of the Russian Federation as an indicator of possible inconsistencies in the labor market - skills mismatch. The author's approach to assessing the demand and supply of professional skills involved calculating the coefficients of demand and supply variability, identifying groups of regions with their maximum values in terms of the levels of professional training, and subsequently assessing the possible imbalances within the selected groups using the coefficient of unemployment variability. The implementation of the author's approach made it possible to identify the groups of regions with coinciding maximum values of the variability of demand and supply by education levels (higher professional education, secondary vocational education, pre-vocational education), to reveal the absence of significant differences in the values of the indicators of supply and demand variability of each region, and to conclude that there is no connection between the maximum variability of supply and demand for skills and unemployment. Based on the results of the study, it was concluded that for the majority of Russian regions there are insignificant differences in the variability of supply and demand for professional skills, what indicates to the absence of serious imbalances in the labor market in the context of vocational education.