Russia's unemployment rate among world's lowest

Russia's unemployment rate is among the world's lowest, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday. "Our employment situation has been the calmest among the modern developed economies, be it the United States, Europe or Asia," Medvedev told a meeting with students in Moscow. According to the prime minister, the unemployment in Russia, which equaled to about 5.5 percent of economically active population, was a very low rate compared to the world's average level, he said. But Medvedev admitted the government must follow the situation very closely, especially in the so-called mono-cities, where the population heavily depended on one sector of the industry. Medvedev noted the government had not been going to preserve jobs by any costs, but the process of job cuts must be accompanied with creation of new jobs. "This is how we can only create an innovative economy," he said. The Russian government set an ambitious goal to create tens of millions of new jobs in high-tech sectors while gradually cutting low-efficient obsolete jobs. Autovaz, Russia's largest car-maker, announced plans to cut 7,500 jobs in 2014 on Friday. Slashing jobs was inevitable due to shrinking demand in Russia's car market, it said. According to Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets, about 150,000 jobs will be cut in Russia this year. But she insisted that the figure meant "nothing extraordinary."