ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the labor force problems that exist within urban areas. It examines the labor force shortage of Soviet cities from two broad perspectives. The first is the demographic problems of Soviet cities. The second major group of labor supply problems falls under an umbrella that might be called allocative inefficiencies. The chapter shows that soviet cities are ill-equipped to handle migrants because of the housing shortage. In both the case of migration and the aging of the population, the issue of housing availability must be taken into account. The fundamental reality of the Soviet urban housing situation is that there is an extreme shortage of apartments. While the urban population as a percent of the total population in the slow-growing Slavic and Baltic republics was 65.1 percent in 1979, in the considerably faster-growing Central Asian republics the comparable figure was 43.4 percent.
