MOSCOW: Russia's unemployment rate stood at 5.9% in 2020, Labour Minister Anton Kotyakov said on Thursday, citing preliminary data from Rosstat, the state statistics service.

Unemployment peaked in August, Kotyakov said, when Russia's economy was still reeling from an oil price crash and COVID-19 lockdown measures, which diminished economic activity.

Other data published by Rosstat showed that Russians' real disposable incomes dropped 3.5% in 2020, compared with a 1% fall the year before.

President Vladimir Putin has long promised to raise real disposable incomes, one of Russia's most socially sensitive issues.

But the impact of the pandemic, coupled with low oil prices, was felt as incomes fell 8.4% in the second quarter of 2020 year-on-year -- the deepest quarterly decline since 1999.

The situation on the labour market is gradually stabilising, Kotyakov said.

"Our goal by the end of 2021 is to restore employment to pre-pandemic levels. And to do this we need to employ at least another million of our citizens," he said.