The protestors, who were anxiously awaiting the result of the meeting, eventually rushed the building, pushing past militsiya officers and barging through the session’s closed doors.  After speaking out concerns about unemployment and withheld wages, the group peacefully left the building and continued to wait outside.

Pikalevo has seen sweeping unemployment as result of Russia’s economic crisis.  Three mainstay employers in town – Basel Cement, Pikalevsky Glinozem and Metakhim – have shut down, and smaller companies have also reduced their workforces.  The local heat and power station cut hot water and heat to the town a week ago, citing unpaid debts accrued by Basel Cement.

Officially, 1500 people have been laid off, although another 2500 people are either on unpaid leave, or have had their work-week shortened.  In a town of 22,000, around 50 percent of the working-age population is now without work.

Svetlana Antropova, a trade union leader from the Basel Cement-Pikalevo factory, earlier described how locals had started foraging for food – cooking soup from green nettles, making salads from dandelions and chickweed, and even eating stray dogs.

Locals also described a skyrocketing crime rate that made is dangerous to be outside at night.

Valery Serdyukov, the governor of the Leningrad Oblast, has meanwhile downplayed the situation in Pikalevo as hysteria created by trade unions and the media.  Serdyukov is expected to meet with city officials in the near future.

“There is no hot water there in Pikalevo,” Serdyukov said.  “Well, it happens.  And not just there.  It happens even in Moscow and St. Petersburg, that the water is turned of for a couple months.  There is no tragedy here.  As for heat, well, I don’t think it’s needed so much during the summer.”

Adjusted for the latest numbers, Russia’s unemployment rate now stands at 9.5 percent.

The increase in unemployment was higher than anticipated.  The prognosis from the Ministry of Health and Social Development expected the number to rise by 2.2 million for the year.  Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, also used this number in writing its anti-crisis budget for 2009.

Many Russians who had not lost their jobs were also feeling the pinch at work.  In an effort to cut costs, companies were slashing workweeks and hours for workers.  A recent survey also found that 32 percent of Russians had encountered delays in wage payments in March.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev earlier announced that 1 million temporary jobs would be created in 2009.  Medvedev also suggested that workers who lost their jobs undergo retraining.

Nagaitsev added that the pool of vacancies has also dropped to 164 thousand, from 175.5 thousand on November 14th.

Unemployment in Russia as a whole was also rising sharply, reaching 5 million by the end of November, the latest period where figures were available from Rosstat, the federal statistics agency. Across the country, some 1.3 million people were registered as unemployed in November, up from October but below official unemployment figures from 2007.

According to the official data from the Ministry and Rostrud (the Federal Labor and Employment Service) the number of people registered as unemployed rose by 15.8 percent from the previous year, from 1.203 to 1.498 million.

Nearly 200 companies have also revealed plans to shorten their work hours or send employees on mandatory leave.

Yet the data may not show the full scale of layoffs.

“Not all organizations present this information,” a statement by Ministry of Public Health explained, “and this is especially characteristic for small businesses.”

Only a share of businesses officially report layoffs to the Ministry, and some companies have gone to great lengths to make fired workers look like “voluntary resignations.”. Finally, not all laid-off workers register at the unemployment office, making their situation impossible to track.

According to Kommersant’s estimates, which account for unreported layoffs, the actual job loss rate may have been as high as 800 thousand in November. The corresponding number of total unemployed workers may exceed 5 million.