Unexpected Beneficiary of Repressions and Mass Emigration of Belarusians — The Revenue of This Russian Business in Minsk Grew by 4000%
The greater the imbalance in the labor market, the more expensive the services of an intermediary between an employer and an employee become. And now, a simple business model shows wonders of profitability. This is all rabota.by. The golden age for the Russian owners of this resource came after the crackdown on Tut.by.
Builders. Photo LookByMedia
The monopolist in the field of job advertisements in Belarus is the website rabota.by, which belongs to LLC "Vsya Rabota" (All Work).
The dynamics of this company's revenue show how difficult things are for employers now.
Millions BEL Rabota.by vs. Hn.by, on the massive migration of workers from Belarus Source: Statistical data of legal and mainagement accounting. ▭ Nasha NivaRabota.by revenue 2020-2025
The company's revenue has been explosively growing since 2021. Today, a small enterprise with low prime cost and a simple business model generates both revenue and net profit at the level of an established Belarusian IT company.
The profitability of rabota.by is a fantastic 78%; net profit for 2025 is 16.5 million Belarusian rubles. The main money comes from charging employers who place job advertisements.
The company's profits are consistently withdrawn as dividends. To whom? To Russians.
The company "Vsya Rabota" itself appeared in July 2020 as a result of the merger of rabota.tut.by and hh.by — the Belarusian branch of the Russian HeadHunter. "Tutby Media" owned 40%, another 10% belonged to Belarusian manager Alexander Chakan, and the remaining 50% to Russians.
After the crackdown on Tut.by, the Belarusian LLC "Vsya Rabota" became 100% owned by the Russian legal entity "HeadHunter".
The Russian "HeadHunter" is a public Russian company; its ownership structure is unknown — there are many shareholders, and the Russian founders (Levan Nazarov, Odyssey Gavrilov, and others) are believed to hold large minority stakes. About half of the company's shares are in free circulation on the Russian stock exchange and belong to Russian investment funds and retail investors.
Minsk, 2020. Archive photo: Nasha Niva
A mass outflow of people from Belarus began at the end of 2020 and continues to this day.
Part of the able-bodied population leaves the country for economic reasons, because Belarus has the lowest salaries in the region.
Another part of the able-bodied population seeks refuge abroad from repressions.
And even those highly qualified workers who have good salaries and do not feel at risk of persecution are often forced to leave for corporate reasons — foreign counterparties of Belarusian technology firms demand the relocation of legal entities and staff to other jurisdictions for moral or banking standard considerations.
Thus, both low-skilled and highly skilled labor are being washed out of the country.
The authorities are trying to replace low-skilled workers by attracting economic migrants from backward regions of Asia: Bangladesh, Pakistan, India.
Employers, faced with the fact that placing a vacancy on their own website no longer yields any results, are forced to turn to intermediaries and search for employees on specialized resources.
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