The authors’ main focus is matters concerning the quality of the human capital of Russian professionals and managers, as well as how diverse the latter are in this respect and what sort of role human capital plays when it comes to differentiating Russian workers in general and professionals/managers in particular. It is revealed in the article that both professionals and managers are diverse groups, and highlighted is the fact that the quality of human capital of professionals and managers is quite low. Despite there being over one and a half times the people with higher education occupied in the Russian economy than there are jobs available for professionals, about a quarter of those employed in said positions are lacking higher education. Things are even worse when it comes to the managers. However, advanced training is uncommon for most of their subgroups. The main reason for this, as shown by the results of using Mincer’s formula, is the fact that Russian employers are not prepared to pay workers differentiated salaries which take into account the quality of their human capital. As a result Russian professionals and managers are increasingly less interested in expanding their knowledge. Another serious problem is inappropriate use of the knowledge the do have, since even among professionals nearly 60% are not occupied in their respective fields, not even in fields adjacent to their acquired specialties. The article also examines the role of human capital in the formation of two macro-classes of Russian society. For one of them (mainly comprised of workers) human capital is in no way a differentiating factor when it comes to occupying one professional position or another. As for the other one, the representatives of which can be attributed (from a standpoint of the specifics of their professional positions) to the middle-class, the quality of human capital plays an important role when it comes to a person joining one professional group or another. When devising a strategy for Russia’s socio-economic development, matters concerning the human capital of professionals and managers are especially important. Without it being of high quality, it is impossible to make a technological breakthrough, the purpose of which would be to lead Russia away from being stranded among nations with average income and help make the transition to a level which correlated with the modern reality of technological progress. Particularly professionals and managers, them traditionally being “locomotives” when it comes to economic development in modern societies, must become the key actors in such a breakthrough, they must be the ones to support it by means of constantly renewing and expanding their knowledge. However, are they actually capable of assuming this crucial role, and what is the quality of their human capital? This article, which we present to the reader, is dedicated to finding the answers to these questions.

professional groups, professional structure, social structure, human capital, middle-class, professionals, managers.

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