The number of vacancies in the IT sector has decreased and salary growth has slowed down

In the first half of 2026, the Russian IT sector recorded a drop in demand for staff and a slowdown in revenue growth. This was reported on July 10 by the newspaper Kommersant with reference to the SuperJob study.

It follows from the material that the decrease in indicators is due to the development of artificial intelligence systems, which cover part of the business' human resources needs, as well as a high key rate, forcing companies to postpone the implementation of research projects (R&D).

The number of vacancies in the IT sector in January-June 2026 decreased by 21% compared to the same period last year, SuperJob reported. In turn, the Ministry of Finance added that the decline in the number of vacancies primarily reflects a change in the structure of demand from employers and an active influx of young professionals into the market due to the development of IT education.

The dynamics of salaries of IT specialists in June 2026 increased by only 3.9% in annual terms, which turned out to be lower than the official inflation rate. Revenue growth is now provided mainly by experienced developers at the middle and senior levels, while competition continues to grow in the segment of specialists without experience. At the same time, the leaders in terms of median salaries in Moscow in the second quarter were programmers of the Kotlin languages (380 thousand rubles) and Golang (360 thousand rubles).

The general cooling of the market is confirmed by data from other relevant platforms, which record a drop in the number of offers and an increase in the number of applicants. According to HeadHunter, the average salary offered in the country was 98.8 thousand rubles (in Moscow — 151.4 thousand rubles), and the competition for one open IT vacancy reached 22 resumes. The areas of artificial intelligence and information security were the least affected by the negative trend.

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Sergey Taran, Managing Director of LANSOFT, told Izvestia on June 3 that after several years of rapid growth, the Russian IT market took a pause for the first time: the pace of development decreased, and the total revenue of the industry decreased. As the market cools, companies are increasingly asking not what technologies to implement, but what effect the investments have already had. Why does a business abandon chaotic purchases and switch to calculating the real effectiveness of IT projects?

Anna Bekish, Director of Compensation and Benefits at T1 IT Holding, said on April 2 that wages remain a weighty argument when choosing an employer, but they have long ceased to be a decisive criterion in the IT industry. According to her, first of all, it is important for an employee to understand what he is working for. When a person sees the goals of the company and his department, knows why a particular task is set and what role he plays in the overall strategy, his involvement increases. Without this, even a promising and interesting project risks becoming a mechanical routine.