Experts told how to equalize productivity and wage growth

Wage growth in Russia is six times higher than labor productivity. Chief economist of Gazprombank Pavel Biryukov on the air of the ChEZ program on Radio RBC said that now robotics and automation of processes are much closer, and new technologies will increase labor productivity.

“It will always be some kind of hybrid. That is, obviously, with a high degree of probability, new technologies are coming. Again, cheap coding with artificial intelligence makes it even closer, even more realistic.

At the same time, he recalled that the introduction of technology entails some difficulties in the labor market. According to Biryukov, labor productivity will be accelerated by automation.

“On the other hand, in a sense, perhaps, the prioritization of public spending, which the Ministry of Finance recently says literally at all its official speeches, it will also push the indicators from the other side,” he added.

Financial Director of the Shcherbin lift plant Sergey Firstov said that the number of his company has grown stronger than the level of production. This is due to an increase in the localization of the production process, he said.

“We’re fighting for every minute of work, so I’d say we have a tenfold gap, well, just not,” said the CFO.

He also drew attention to the fact that the plant is actively introducing automated equipment to increase labor productivity.

For 2022-2025, real wages in Russia increased by 25.2% compared to the level of 2021, and productivity by 4.2%. Thus, the accumulated gap in the dynamics of the two indicators for this period reached 21 percentage points (pp), follows from Rosstat data updated on September 25.

At the same time, in the first half of 2026, real wages increased by 6.5% year-on-year, and productivity, according to Rosstat (excluding small businesses), decreased by 0.5%. The difference in annual rates was 7 percentage points against about 5 percentage points for the same period of 2025.