Putin: real wages should grow by 3-5% this year

Real wages on average in Russia this year should grow by about 3-5%, and real disposable income – by 2-3%, declared Russian President Vladimir Putin during a conversation with workers at the Tulazheldormash plant.

The President noted that in 2022, nominal wages did not have time to grow at the same pace as inflation, which reached 17%, but at the end of last year, real wages still grew by 0.3-0.6% year-on-year, and real incomes – by 0.9%.

“But this year we still expect changes for the better… We think that real wages in the country as a whole should grow by 3-5%, and real disposable incomes of the population by 2-3%,” Putin said.

The growth of the population’s income is “task number one” for the state, the President stressed.

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova at a meeting between Putin and members of the government reportedthat from 2017 to 2022, 3.6 million Russians have increased their incomes to above the subsistence level and overcome the poverty threshold. Golikova recalled that the poverty rate in the fourth quarter of 2022 amounted to 7.9% (in the fourth quarter of 2021 – 8.5%). In 2022, the share of Russians living below the poverty line was 10.5% (15.3 million people), which is 0.5% less than in 2021 and the lowest figure in the entire history of observation.

According to Rosstat, average per capita nominal cash income increased in 2022 by 12.4% to RUB 45,272. At the same time, real disposable money incomes of the population (adjusted for inflation and minus mandatory payments) decreased by 1%. Real wages over the past five years, according to Golikova, increased by 22.1%. According to Rosstat, excluding final data on small and medium-sized enterprises, real average monthly accrued wages in 2022 compared to 2021 slightly decreased by 1%.

Putin then noted that the growth of real incomes of citizens should accelerate against the backdrop of inflation slowing down to 4%, as well as an additional increase in the minimum wage at the beginning of next year by 18.5%.

How wrote Earlier, Vedomosti, the income of the 10% of the poorest Russians in 2022, according to Rosstat, grew six times faster than the income of the 10% of the richest. The average per capita cash income of the first group increased by 1.8% in real terms (adjusted for inflation) to 10,535 rubles, the last – by 0.3% to 165,695 rubles.