The educational network of educational institutions that are implementing programs of primary professional education includes twenty-three vocational schools and two professional lyceums. There are departments of primary professional education in eleven technicums of technology and in a professional pedagogical (secondary-level) college. About 21 percent of the total number of graduates of the ninth through eleventh grades in the general education schools enroll annually in the primary professional education system. In the oblast, training is provided in fifty-four blue-collar professions, and an interdepartmental council has been set up that, based on monitoring surveys, compiles a list of state requisitions for specialist training. Educational institutions make changes to the list of professions in accordance with labor market needs. Comparing the structure of specialties and professions in the system of primary and secondary professional education and the structure of the needs of the labor market, everybody notes that there are obvious disparities, characteristic of Ul'ianovsk Oblast, between the training and the specialists that are needed. The primary professional education system provides training in fifty-four blue-collar specialties, but the labor market needs qualified blue-collar workers in 148 specialties. Thus, to eliminate the cadre imbalance, the author provides some tasks that should be accomplished. (Contains 9 tables.)