Blue collar workers are more likely to be rejected by potential employers due to insufficient salaries

Many blue-collar professionals turn down job offers due to insufficient pay, Talantix data shows. This is evidence that the increase in wages for this, according to many employers, shortage category of employees is still lagging behind demands and is perceived as insufficient, although in figures for many of them, as follows from hh.ru statistics, over the past year it has outpaced the increase in wages in the economy generally.

Doctors, treasurers and shift supervisors are most often dissatisfied with the salary offered to them at an interview, as follows from the results of the Talantix recruiting system (part of hh.ru). The analysis included aggregated anonymized data on 3.7 million reasons for refusals that company recruiters independently indicated in this system during 2023. Among the ten professions whose representatives are most often rejected by potential employers because of salary, there are quite a few “blue collar” workers – which may indicate their subjective perception of the increase in offers for this, according to many employers, scarce category of applicants as insufficient.

As analysts note, in general, an insufficient salary level in 2023 became the reason for refusing an employer’s offer in 3% of cases – and took fifth place in the ranking of factors that influenced failed employment (qualification requirements were in the first place). Compared to 2022, the share of such situations decreased by 0.8 percentage points, that is, by 26% – this approximately corresponds to the increase in salary offers recorded by hh.ru: the median salary indicated in vacancies by employers in the first quarter of 2024 year-on-year increased by 34% and amounted to 60 thousand rubles.

Nevertheless, for a number of specialties, it was the insufficient level of remuneration that became the decisive factor for refusing the offer. In the top ten such professions, up to half belong to the blue collar category. Among them are shift supervisors and site foremen (10%), production line operators (9%), and technologists (7.7%). At the same time, some professions usually associated with “blue collar” workers, on the contrary, are included in the list of those who rarely refuse jobs due to insufficient salaries. Thus, among electricians there are only 1.6%, among drivers – 1.3%, and among general workers – 1.2%.

The demand for blue-collar workers has increased – according to hh.ru, the number of vacancies in the professional field of “production, service” in February 2024 was 25% higher compared to February 2023, there were 2.9 per vacancy summary. In the field of “working personnel,” vacancies have increased by 43%, and there are 2.5 resumes per vacancy. At the same time, says Marina Khadina, director of development of the Talantix CRM system, companies are ready to offer such specialists higher salaries. “According to statistics for 2023 from the hh service, the proposed median salary in the professional areas of “labor personnel” and “production, service” was 59.5 thousand rubles each, and in Russia as a whole – 49.2 thousand rubles. , that is, by 10.3 thousand rubles. less,” she notes. For technologists, salary offers over the year increased by 16%, to 69 thousand rubles, for site managers – by 19%, to 71 thousand rubles, and for line operators – by 20%, to 51 thousand rubles. Let us recall that, according to Rosstat, nominal wages in the Russian Federation as a whole increased by 14.1% last year, and real wages by only 7.8%.

In the industry breakdown, companies most often faced with refusals of employment due to salary are those belonging to the sectors “mining” (10.5% of all refusals here occurred due to insufficient remuneration), “IT technologies and communications” (6.4%), “science and education” (5.6%), “energy” (5.4%) and “finance, insurance” (4.5%). Geographically, dissatisfaction with the offered salary more often became the reason for refusing a new job in Udmurtia (8% of all refusals here are associated with financial compensation), in Mari El (6.8%), in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra (6.5%), in Moscow (5.9%) and in the Kaluga region (5.6%).

Anastasia Manuilova