06 December 2017, 01:27 / Opinions

Very poor teachers just became poor

Coming out of the crisis, public sector employees’ salaries increased – but only slightly

As the Russian economy emerged from the crisis, doctors and teachers began to dress a little better: there were fewer truly poor people, that is, those living on a salary in the amount of the subsistence minimum (MS, now 11,163 rubles for the working population), than at the height of the crisis, but their share remains significant. The growth of wages in recent years, including in the public sector, has not led to a significant reduction in the share of the working poor due to inflation and limited resources of regional budgets.

Experts from RANEPA and the Gaidar Institute, in their monthly monitoring of the economic situation, calculated the dynamics of the number of workers with low (in the amount of one, two and three monthly wages) salaries and their share in individual sectors. Compared to the crisis year of 2015, the share of extremely poor workers with wages below the monthly minimum in the country as a whole decreased, according to data for the nine months of 2017, from 12.4 to 9.2%, and those with wages below three monthly minimums - from 64.6 up to 59.5%. But if we compare the salary ratio with the pre-crisis 2013, the situation has hardly changed: 9.6 and 56%, respectively.

The situation differs significantly in different sectors of the economy: for example, over these four years, the share of extremely poor among workers in agriculture, health care and manufacturing has decreased and increased among those employed in education, hotels, catering and construction. In general, the share of people employed in healthcare, education and science with earnings below three monthly minimums increased slightly.

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More than others for 2013–2017. (in 2017 - data for nine months) according to Rosstat, salaries of workers in agriculture (by 45.2% - from 15,724 to 22,824 rubles) and in the manufacturing industry (by 40.6% - from 27,095) increased up to 38,023 rubles), which is higher than the national average (28.9%) and comparable to consumer inflation for 2013–2017. (42.6%). During the same time, wages in construction increased by 23%, and in the hotel and restaurant sector by 26%.

Salaries of public sector employees also grew unevenly: for example, the average salary of doctors increased by 26.3% (from 24,439 to 30,877 rubles), teachers - by 23.4% (from 23,458 to 28,968 rubles), scientific workers - by 33.5% (from 48,055 to 64,175 rubles).

Such indicators are a consequence of a whole range of reasons, explains Vladimir Gimpelson, director of the Center for Labor Research at the Higher School of Economics. The increase in state defense orders made it possible to significantly increase the output of engineering and other products and increase the salaries of industry workers. In agriculture, earlier investments, good harvests in recent years and partly import substitution have worked. In addition, the growth in production was combined with a decline in employment and the outflow of low-skilled labor into the gray sector (as well as the retirement of workers), where wages are below average and are not always taken into account by statistics, Gimpelson notes.

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The average salary of doctors in 2013 exceeded the subsistence level by 3.1 times, teachers - by 3 times, in 2017 - by 2.9 and 2.65 times, respectively. The salaries of healthcare workers in 2013 were 82.1% of the national average, in 2017 - 80.4%, education - 79 and 75.4%. It turns out that the May presidential decrees, which demanded that the salaries of teachers, doctors and other public sector employees be brought closer to the regional average, have only been partially implemented. Recently, Labor Minister Maxim Topilin reminded the regions of the need to implement them. But the implementation of the generous promises of the first person is entrusted to the chronically deficit budgets of the territories in the overwhelming majority. Local officials are forced to be cunning in order not to be punished: the May decrees apply to doctors, teachers and other specialists, but not to technical and maintenance personnel, whose salaries remain the same, says Gimpelson. There are fewer poor state employees, they have become simply poor.