This article describes the periods of development of the legal institution of employment contract in Russia. The characteristic features for each of them are defined. The first period was the longest and was marked by develogment of the contract of personal employment as the origin of the modern institution of employment contract. In the second period, the contract of personal employment represented the institution of civil law, and later became the subject of study of the civil law science. At that time the industrial law of the country was forming. A distinctive feature of the third period was the adoption of codified acts, as well as differentiation in the legal regulation of labor relations of temporary and seasonal workers. The fourth period is characterized by changes in state-legal methods of economic management. With the adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Federation labor legislation was assigned to the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and its subjects.
It is concluded that the adoption of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation necessitates a more accurate study of the problems arising in the application of specific rules of law governing the peculiarities of labor of certain categories of workers (for example, labor relations with persons with disabilities are not yet perfect because of the youth of the labor law), conflict of laws issues arising in practice, contradictions that occur in a huge array of legal documents not only in labor law, but also in other branches of law.