Social Well-Being of the Yakutia Business Community

The purpose of this article was to study the modern regional labor market under the influence of major challenges and to identify the features of the social well-being of the Yakutia entrepreneurial community against the backdrop of coronavirus infection in the Arctic. The results of our study showed that the coronavirus crisis has affected all areas of entrepreneurial activity, but with different territorial projections. COVID-19 had a particularly negative impact on the economy as a whole, employment and household budgets in large settlements of Yakutia, where the solvent population, service/paid services and those employed in them are concentrated, as well as on the remote but promising Arctic zone of the region. Despite the noticeable differentiation of the zonal, status level and quality of life of the population of the republic, according to the results of our survey, the positive assessment of the personal prospects of respondents from the general array of the surveyed population in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and among entrepreneurs of the Arctic zone is quite comparable: 63.3% and 62.7%, respectively. Urban entrepreneurs work in more comfortable conditions (comprehensive infrastructure support, more efficient access to information, convenient logistics for receiving goods, a more extensive customer base for doing business, etc.). Rural entrepreneurs are more focused on a collective spirit, hard-working and optimistic. An important factor determining the social well-being of entrepreneurs is economic and legal mechanisms, which include issues of infrastructure support for small and medium-sized businesses, effective interaction with government authorities, targeted regional development programs and personal adaptation strategies.