printThe Fashion Industry Labor Market Under External Shock:
Fictitious Expectations and Resilience
Papushina Yu.O.
Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), Assoc. Prof., School of Management, HSE Perm, Perm, Russia yupapushina@hse.ru
Shenkman E.A.
Junior Research fellow at International Laboratory of Intangible-driven Economy, HSE Perm, Perm, Russia ea_popova@hse.ru
The study was carried out within t he f ramework of the HSE University Fundamental Research Program (HSE-BR-2025-82).
Papushina Yu.O., Shenkman E.A. The Fashion Industry Labor Market Under External Shock: Fictitious Expectations and Resilience. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2026. No 7. P. 31-43
The external shocks of 2022 have altered the operating environment for Russian companies and the demand for skilled workers. This study examines how demand has responded for different categories of professionals in the fashion industry, where the departure of international brands has simultaneously increased uncertainty and opened up market niches for Russian manufacturers. The empirical basis of the research consists of data from the largest private Russian online job-vacancy aggregator for the period from 2021 to 2024, containing over 20.9 million records. To identify fashionindustry vacancies, a specialized selection algorithm was developed, based on lexical analysis methods and artificial intelligence tools. Vacancy data were analyzed in dynamics, which made it possible to compare the situation before and after the external shock of 2022. The study considered changes in the number of enterprises posting vacancies, the dynamics of vacancy volumes across professional groups, as well as the level of wages adjusted for inflation. Additionally, the regional structure of demand was analyzed, taking into account differences in the development of creative industries. The interpretation of results relies on the concepts of resilience, fictitious expectations, and creative resilience. The findings indicate that the labor market reflects positive employer expectations and demonstrates high resilience, but suggest that a vacancy overhang may be emerging in the fashion industry. Demand for fashion-industry specialists varies across regions. Megacities and regions that are stable leaders in the creative-industries ranking respond more quickly to emerging opportunities and maintain a higher growth rate in the number of vacancies compared with other regions. The article also outlines directions for future research.
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