Trade unions estimated salary debts for the first quarter of 2025 at 2.4 billion rubles

According to calculations by trade union organizations, wage arrears in Russia amounted to 2.4 billion rubles in the first quarter of 2025. This follows from the report of the General Confederation of Trade Unions (VKP). They recalled that Rosstat estimated this figure at 1.5 billion rubles at the end of March.

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"In 2025, the problem of timely and full payment of salaries is getting worse in a number of countries. Thus, in Russia, mainly in the manufacturing sector, wage arrears increased threefold in March 2025 compared to December 2024," the document says.

The "statistics" data in the report refers to the figures of Rosstat. As of January 1, 2025, the amount of debt amounted to almost 508 million rubles.

According to official data, salary arrears continue to grow — at the end of May 2025, they amounted to more than 1.6 billion rubles (compared to April, this is more than 180 million rubles more).

In Rostrud, Izvestia was informed that they had received data from trade union monitoring, which contains information about debts of 2.4 billion rubles.

"A reconciliation of the information received is currently underway. It should be borne in mind that this monitoring includes data on the debt of liquidated enterprises, as well as debt that has already been repaid or significantly reduced at the moment," the department said.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Money on hold: salary debts in Russia have tripled