Russia has passed the peak of wage growth – Kommersant

The peak of the “salary race” in Russia has already passed; after the December statistical surge in salaries associated with bonuses, the rate of their growth will inevitably slow down, reports RBC with reference to data from professors at the Higher School of Economics and the Government Financial University. This trend is also confirmed by the publication’s interlocutors in the largest Russian business associations – the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) and Business Russia.

“Enterprises cannot raise wages indefinitely. It is quite possible that we have hit a certain ceiling and after the December statistical surge in salaries associated with bonuses, we will see a slowdown in their growth rates,” Elena Varshavskaya, a professor at the Department of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the Higher School of Business at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, told RBC. According to her, behind the increase in wages in Russia today is not head hunting, but hand hunting.

Former Deputy Minister of Labor of the Russian Federation, professor at the Financial University Alexander Safonov agrees that business is forced to increase salaries due to the need to retain employees, but this resource is finite. The expert believes that wage growth peaked in October, and that in the coming months it will “slow down.” “In the best case, the rate of wage growth will move in line with inflation,” he added.

The RSPP and Delovaya Rossiya note that passing the peak of the “salary race” looks logical, since domestic companies “have few resources left” to increase employee salaries.

November 26 RBC with reference to the results of a survey of the Superjob service reportedthat the majority of Russian companies increased employee salaries during 2023, and every second company plans to do this in the near future.

Read more in the Kommersant FM article “Personnel are put on hold”.

Alexander Kislov