From August 1, working pensioners are waiting for the recalculation of payments: how much will be added

August is approaching – a special month in the life of working pensioners, of which, according to official figures, there are about 8 million in Russia. This category of the elderly in our country, as you know, is the most socially disadvantaged. Unlike other “deserved rest” colleagues, they are not entitled to any indexation from the state. The only thing they can count on is the recalculation of their pension payments, which just happens from August 1.

Probably, it is time to declare August 1 as a “working pensioner’s day”. Non-working recipients of old-age insurance pensions have long celebrated their indexation: they have received a 4.8% increase in payments since January 1. Those who are entitled to social payments have added 3.3% since April 1. And now the “holiday” for working pensioners is approaching – August 1. True, this holiday, as the song says, with tears in the eyes. Firstly, because we don’t have any indexation for older workers (they have been suspended for this category since 2016), but only recalculation, since employers paid the due taxes for them for a whole year. And secondly, because the size of this recalculation is strictly limited by the state.

As clarified in the Social Fund of Russia (SFR), the size of the increase in payments for each working pensioner is determined on an individual basis, since it depends on the year of retirement and wages for the past year. At the same time, the individual pension coefficient cannot be increased by more than three points. Now the cost of one point is 123.77 rubles. Consequently, the maximum increase in pensions for older workers from August 1 will be 372.31 rubles. Roughly speaking, they will be given a bottle of vodka (for men), or economy-class wine (for ladies). “Three-pointers” may still have enough for a loaf of bread or a bar of chocolate – for a snack. Why not a holiday!

The only joy is that in order to receive this increase, working pensioners do not need to write any applications. The annual recalculation of the SFR is carried out on an unannounced basis, that is, automatically.

“Any working person accumulates points over the past year that increase his pension,” explains Mark Goykhman, an analyst at the Capital Skills Academy of Finance, “His individual pension coefficient (IPC) is rising. Interestingly, such an abbreviation also stands for “Institute for Advanced Studies”. It can be said that during the year the qualifications of a pensioner “improve”. The monetary equivalent of this in 2023 is 123.77 rubles. for 1 point, which is 4.8% higher than in 2022. (118.09 rubles)”.

But it is clearly not necessary to rejoice at such an “increase”, the expert continues. After all, inflation in 2022 was, according to Rosstat, 11.94%. The change in the “assessment” of the score is 2.5 times lower than inflation. It is precisely in this, as Goikhman emphasizes, that the situation differs from the general indexation of pensions, which fully compensates for the rise in prices of the previous year. But working pensioners do not receive indexation. The question arises – why?

“The government justifies the absence of indexation of pensions by the fact that working pensioners are indexed wages, that is, their well-being is growing due to the growth of another component of their income,” explains Associate Professor of the Russian University of Economics. Plekhanova Ludmila Ivanova-Shvets. In addition, in the current economic conditions, with a serious budget deficit, the state treasury may not have funds to index pensions for working pensioners, since this requires more than 500 billion rubles, the expert believes.

However, in previous years, when the budget was in surplus, there were no “nuclear” sanctions and the treasury was bursting with export petrodollars, the government stubbornly refused indexation for working pensioners, over and over again rejecting numerous bills on this topic, periodically introduced by individual deputies and senators. “In the phrase “working pensioners,” as they say, the first word is more expensive than the second,” notes Mark Goykhman, “If a person who has the right to an insurance pension continues to work, then in the understanding of our authorities, he is more likely to be a worker than a pensioner. Therefore, it is believed that he does not really need to recalculate the size of the pension itself: the salary is enough.”

The lack of adequate payments and indexation forces older people to either end their careers or go into shadow employment, argues economist Andrey Loboda, director of communications at BitRiver. At the beginning of this year, according to official statistics, this category of citizens amounted to almost 7.9 million people, which is almost two times less than in 2015. According to the forecast of the All-Russian Research Institute of Labor, the number of working pensioners in 2025 will decrease to 5.6 million people. On average, those pensioners who continue to work today work no more than 2-3 years, while three years ago their average work experience lasted almost six years.

“Ignoring adequate indexation of old-age benefits simply pushes older people who are needed by the country’s economy out of the labor market. Against the backdrop of growing inflationary risks, it is difficult to talk about an increase in pensions in the amount of less than 400 rubles as fair. An increase of 12-15% to last year’s payments to working pensioners would look adequate,” the expert concludes.