The Russians were promised a 10 percent increase in wages: experts doubted

Prosperity and well-being is not far off. The Russians learned about this from the speech of Maxim Oreshkin, Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation for Economics, at an educational marathon. It turns out that in April, real wages in the country will grow by 10%. Do not rush to climb into wallets and look for added bills there. It’s not about money, it’s about arithmetic.

Aide to the President of the Russian Federation shared bright prospects for the near future at the federal educational marathon “Knowledge. First.” In his opinion, good prospects await the Russian economy this year. GDP will grow by 1-2%, and the federal budget will turn from a severe deficit into a surplus.

But all these are macroeconomic indicators that do not directly affect our pockets. And what can ordinary Russians expect from this year? It turns out that everything will also be fine with us, and literally tomorrow …

“By the end of April, real wage growth should be about 10% compared to last year,” Maxim Oreshkin promised. “The competitive advantage of the Russian economy will, step by step, become high labor productivity, effective proprietary technological platforms,”

In general, there was not a penny, and suddenly altyn – this is how the listeners most likely perceived the words of the assistant to the president. After all, following the results of the past year, real wages in the country decreased by 1%. And here there is such a sharp jump and not sometime in a year or 5 years, but already just the other day, following the results of April.

Could it be?

A little earlier, the Ministry of Economic Development predicted that real wages in the country would grow by 5.4% this year due to low unemployment and competition for personnel, which decide everything.

But for 10%… Where can they fall into our pocket? After all, the state has not announced any large-scale indexation of salaries, say, for state employees.

Let’s break it down piece by piece. What is the real disposable wage? These are the amounts that a person receives after deducting taxes (which are usually constant) and adjusted for inflation. The higher the inflation, the lower the real value of wages, and vice versa.

So, last spring, as we know, it just went off scale: in April 2022, it was already 17.83% in the annual year. Statistics on inflation in April this year, the statistics department is not yet available. But in March it slowed down to 3.5%, and on April 10 it was 2.8%. Analysts expect inflation to remain below 3% in April.

Here’s the secret to the miraculous wage growth. Last year, 17% had to be deducted from the nominal values, and this year only 3%. Hocus pocus. On paper, the real increase in wages is “about 10%”, but in pockets and purses – how much money was, so much is left. And that’s even better…

According to the candidate of economic sciences, financial analyst Mikhail Belyaev, wage growth – the one that is real, and not “paper” – directly depends on the increase in labor productivity.

“But that’s ideal,” he explains. – In some areas, it can outpace the growth of labor productivity – to stimulate the workforce, attract personnel, for example. However, the resources for higher wages are taken upfront from future productivity gains. Looking ahead, we can “eat up” part of future income. But, of course, only for a short period of time.

– Doesn’t the announced real increase in wages by 10% in April bother you?

– I will say this: in recent years, wages have been growing at a low pace in general, and in some sectors of the economy – the IT sector, for example – there has been an active increase in them. However, a certain opportunistic moment is not ruled out here: the current low inflation due to the high threshold last year coincided with some growth in nominal wages. And we got such a statistical-arithmetic result. Although in my opinion, the figure of 10% is riddled with excessive optimism. In order for real wages to grow by 10%, it is necessary that nominal wages, taking into account inflation, rise by 14-15%. We do not see such a surge.