Page 22 - RUSRptAug18

4.5.2 Income dynamics
Private companies in Moscow and St Petersburg have stopped increasing salaries in the first half of 2018, according to the recruiting company HeadHunter, as cited by RBC.
In Moscow incomes of employees in the first half of 2018 did not change compared to the same period last year. In St Petersburg and the Leningrad region, they fell by 2%.
"The main change is due to a small increase in wages in the regions with zero dynamics in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which is not typical for the market," Natalia Danina, head of the analytical business solutions department at HeadHunter, told RBC.
The highest salary growth in the first half of 2018 was registered in the North Caucasus Federal District where wages were up by 13% y/y, followed by the Central and North-Western regions (7%), Siberian (6%), the Volga region (5%), and southern Russia (4%).
The jobs that were most likely to give you a pay rise saw the biggest salary increases in the non-food sectors (5%), food (3.9%) consumer goods & real estate (3.4%), as well as chemical production and retail (3.3%), the survey found.
Salaries in the IT industry, which also commands some of the best wages in the country (average RUB81,300/month) saw salaries decreased by 0.4% in the period, as did salaries in the hotel and restaurant business (-3.4%).
Nominal salaries of Russians in January-May 2018 increased by 11.5% compared to the same period a year earlier, and real wages by 9%, according to Rosstat's preliminary estimates.
The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade predicts nominal wage growth for the year 2018 at 9% and an increase in real wages of 6.3%.
However, the government figures are driven by the large public sector wage bill that skews the statistics and are were not taken into account in the HeadHunter survey.
Raiffeisen presented an optimistic and a pessimistic scenario, the impact of raising the retirement age in the population's income. In an optimistic version, the effect of the reform for the growth of the economy and incomes of the population "will be generally close to zero", in a pessimistic one it will turn out to be negative. In the implementation of an optimistic scenario, there will be a redistribution of income between different population groups, analysts say. The income of those who can find a job, at least, will remain stable or even increase. However, those who do not find a job will lose in income. In general, under such a scenario, real incomes in the first years of reform may decrease by 1%, and by 2034 they will remain approximately at the level of 2018 or slightly lower. In a pessimistic scenario, the incomes of the population will fall and by 3% will decrease by 3%, while without reform they would increase by 3%. In an optimistic version, the effect of the pension reform on GDP will also initially be negative, and by 2034 - zero or even somewhat
22 RUSSIA Country Report August 2018 www.intellinews.com