The paper concerns the performance of social mobility mechanisms in Russia. It is emphasized that due to dysfunction of social mobility mechanism considerable social risks arise, which can cause, and have already caused throughout the past, disastrous consequences, and ultimately — collapse of the established order and loss of power by current elites. Old Soviet social mobility mechanisms, such as party membership-driven, have already seized to exist in nowadays Russia. New inherent to capitalism social mobility mechanisms, such as business-driven and proved to be eff ective in the West, are yet to come. Social mobility mechanism performance depends heavily not only on its functionality, but also on the extent to which its type matches with that of its «passenger» and thus career planning becomes a matter of utmost importance to each of the «passengers». It seems to be reasonable to develop a network of career planning services. The paper highlights two possible approaches to the issue of selecting optimal degree of state intervention in the labor market. Proponents of the fi rst approach believe, that the more market the better. They argue that the intervention should be minimal and at its lowest it would boost markets to prosper as a result of invisible hand of the market coming to play at the marketplace. Meanwhile, those advocating the second approach, believe that the state should directly support vulnerable groups of workers and provide them with certain advantages at the labor market. Such advantages can be off ered, for instance, through establishment of quotas system. It is necessary to tradeoff risks justifi ability in terms of the size of advances, assigned for workplaces created, with employers’ the real costs of creating new workplaces. Workplaces, fi nanced on the compensatory basis should cost more, as bearing less risks to a city, and correspondingly, workplaces created based on advancing, should cost less. It is suggested also to harmonize workplaces lifecycle with the cost of creating thereof. Under such conditions education as the traditional and also highly signifi cant to this country social mobility mechanism becomes of a special importance. Thus, when reforming educational sphere, it is necessary to take into account among others consequences those of social and political nature, particularly the rise of social risks of transition to fee-based education. Fee-based education would inevitably accelerate social diff erentiation and threaten social stability, as children from wealthier families, getting proper education would become more wealthy, while children from poorer families, unable to get sound education are doomed to get poorer.