The article considers the questions of development and improvement of labor potential of the Russian Federation on Federal and regional level. The theoretical characteristics, types and structure of labor potential are presented. The relevance of studying the labor potential is that the peculiarities of the demographic situation in the country, quantitative and qualitative characteristics of human resources both at the Federal and regional levels of governance becomes the most important condition for economic development of the country. Therefore, for the development of industrial production, introduction of innovations into the industries in Russia special attention should be given to the development of science, education, professional development, formation of motivational programs for the economically active population of the country. Serious attention is paid to the analysis of the labor potential of the Russian Federation, as well as to identify main problems and development trends of the labor market in modern conditions. In this article the authors analyze the labor resources of the Kemerovo, Samara and Leningrad regions, identifi ed the main demographic characteristics and the calculation of indicators of workforce development at the regional level, namely the level of economic activity of the population, the employment rate of the population, the level of unemployment. On the basis of the analysis of demographic indicators, a comparative analysis of the workforce development study of constituent entities of the Russian Federation is made. The practical value of the article lies in the authors ‘ method of analysis of labor resources and developed on the base of analysis key trends in the optimization of workforce development at the regional level that can be applied to study other regional socio-economic systems.