The reason for writing this article was the 20th anniversary of institutionalization of social work in Russia in 2011. It is believed that both the social work and the consumer society are products of market economics/capitalism development. However, modern Russia experiences two controversial processes: rapid development of capitalism and erosion of employment and labour – labour conditions are becoming worse, salaries and pensions are falling down. The core issue of this paper is how the “society of deficiency” with full employment and without poor people – traditional clients of social work – has become a consumer society with well-developed social work.