The problem of reducing the labor potential of rural areas

A steady trend of recent decades is the continued decline in the rural population and the reduction of its share in the total structure to one quarter, although in the 20th century about half of the population of Russia lived outside the cities. Among the main reasons that caused the outflow of the population from rural areas is urbanization - an increase in the role of cities in the development of society, the formation of a more favorable socio-economic environment in them in comparison with villages. And if before such a gap was less noticeable, today the general level of development of cities and villages in Russia is differentiated significantly, which only contributes to an increase in the outflow of the population, since life in an urban environment is more comfortable. In the course of the work, an assessment was made of the change in the number and share of the rural population in the Russian Federation, federal districts and regions of the Central Federal District, the emerging trends and their causes were identified based on the analysis of data for the period 2016-2021. It has been established that the population living in rural areas of the Russian Federation continues to decline: if in 2016 there were about 37.9 million people in the country. villagers, which is equal to almost 26% of the total population of the country, in 2021 the number of people living in rural areas decreased by a million, and their share was 25.3%. An assessment of the data between the federal districts and within the Central Federal District showed that there is a significant differentiation in the ratio of the urban and rural population, which is due to geographical features and economic specialization. In the Central Federal District, the regions with the highest value of the indicator include all regions of the Central Chernobyl Region, which have a pronounced agricultural specialization.