The prediction, planning and management of the social development of a rural region presupposed typologization of its communities. This study aimed to: build an overall social typology of the rural communities in Siberia; elucidate the role of employment structure among other type-forming factors of social differentiation; build a special typology of communities by employment structure; investigate the essence and intensity of the shifts in the employment structure between 1967 and 1972; and study the relationship of dynamic shifts in employment to its initial structure in 1967. Data were derived from 2 surveys which described 157 rural communities in Siberia by several social indicators in 1967 and 1972. A "linguistic method" of data processing on computer which combined factor analysis with automatic classification of objects was used. It was shown that the differences in the social status of certain communities were reduced to differences by three factors: social-branch employment structure, educational level, and level of social services rendered to the population. Concurrent examination of the first two factors discerned community types with different social, industrial, and skill structure of employment. The analysis of dynamic shifts between 1967 and 1972 indicated that their nature was essentially different for those community types which were discerned according to the 1967 statistics. (Author/NQ)