Assessment of the immigration impact on the employed in small entrepreneurship in the Russian regions

The relevance of the study is due to the need to establish various factors for the successful development of small business in Russian regions. The article is devoted to assessing the impact of internal and external immigration on the development of small business through employment indicators in this sector. Median regression methods were used. The sample size is 75 Russian regions. The analysis period is 2008-2019. The dependent variables were the number of employees in small and microenterprises, as well as the number of employees in individual entrepreneurship. The results showed that intraregional, interregional and international immigration have a positive impact on employment in individual entrepreneurship and small enterprises. Additionally, some demographic and social variables were used (unemployment, demographic load factor, the ratio of men and women, the time of job search, the level of real wages, etc.), which also turned out to be significant in separate models, but with a different direction of influence on employment in small businesses. Thus, the small sector of the economy really gets some development due to immigration flows, which compensate for the possible shortage of labor in certain territories.