On July 20, 2018, a new issue of the Russian population welfare monitoring was released. The issue tackles the interstate salary comparison in 2011-2017
The new issue of the monitoring analyses the dynamics of the salary levels in Russia in comparison with the salaries in the other countries, such as these ones of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) ors of the Central and Eastern Europe, China and Brazil. The issue is the update of the feature published by HSE in the May issue of the monitoring in 2016.The foundation for the analysis lies on the data provided by national statistic services, statistical services of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Interstate Statistical Committee of the CIS, the World Bank and the International Monetary Bank (IMF). According to the results of the analysis, Belarus is the only country in the CIS to reach the level of average wages in terms of purchasing power parity, which could be comparable to Russia. That is while the Belarusian figures are significantly lower than Russian ones in terms of the nominal exchange rate. The published evaluations are based on the official statistic data and hence can be applied only to the open sector of the economy. They also do not consider the palpable geographical difference of the wages level.
The comparisons of salary level in terms of PPP show that among the countries of the Eastern Europe Russia falls behind Poland, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Hungary, keeps the same level as Romania and is ahead of Bulgaria.
In comparison with such BRIC countries as Brazil and China, Russia has a higher salary level. While the comparison based on the nominal exchange rate places the salary in China higher than the Russian one, the comparison in terms of PPP and the correction on the actual consumer price dynamics shows that Russia keeps a higher salary level. Brazilian features are lower than Russian ones by any comparison method.
The full text of the monitoring is available on the link.
The authors of the issue are Lilia Ovcharova, Kseniya Abanokova and Svetlana Biryukova.