New Challenges and Prospects for the Development of Employment within Aviation Industry

The article considers the current problems of transformation of the labour and employment environment in the sector of air transport in Russia in connection with the aspects of sustainable development of this industry. The use of this approach to analyse the current state and forecast development prospects is based on the trends of increasing importance of intangible assets of air transport companies.

Air transport, influencing the mobility of the population, the volume of rapid cargo transportation, has a feedback effect both for the entire country’s economy and for the sphere of employment, which must be considered when determining development strategies for this sector. The objective of the study is to identify new challenges and substantiate methodological approaches to revealing quality trends in employment prospects in the sector of air transport.

The employment model acts in the case not only as a marker of the success of economic transformation, but also as a necessary factor in sustainable development and efficiency of the aviation industry. The study has revealed ambiguous trends in transformation of the employment model at air transport enterprises under the influence of both long-term and market factors in development of air transportation, digitalisation, national features of its functioning, the consequences of the «corona crisis» and modern challenges for the Russian economy. It has been determined that under the influence of these processes, there is a reduction in employment in the economic activity of air transport with a simultaneous qualitative change in the structure of jobs, an increasing need for digital skills of employees of all skill levels, and differentiation of wages. It has been shown that digitalisation in the aviation industry can have an ambivalent effect on the demand for labour in the professional and qualification context. The study applied statistical and analytical methods, methods of content analysis, analysis of domestic and foreign publications on the examined problem. The sources of information include data from Federal State Statistics Service, large recruitment agencies and Internet job search web-portals as well as data on the labour market of air transport employees. Based on the results of the study, promising vectors for the transformation of the labour environment and new employment management strategies were identified considering changes in labour demand in response to new challenges in the development of the aviation industry to ensure its sustainable development.

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