Payment is difficult: half of Muscovites receive less than 115 thousand rubles.
In Moscow, the gap between the average salary and the median (when one half gets more and the other half gets less) exceeded 80 thousand rubles. According to Rosstat, the average income of residents of the capital in April was 197 thousand. At the same time, the salaries of half of the employees do not exceed 115 thousand, recruiters told Izvestia. The official statistics are distorted by the extremely high salaries of a narrow stratum of top management, IT specialists and employees of the financial sector. At the same time, the cost of living in Moscow is often focused specifically on higher income. This difference provokes distrust of official data and reduces labor motivation, experts warn. How the wage gap affects the labor market is in the Izvestia article.
Why is there a gap between official and real salaries?
The average accrued salary in Moscow in April 2026 was 197 thousand rubles, according to Rosstat data. At the same time, according to the estimates of the largest recruiting services — hh.ru , SuperJob and Avito Jobs,— the median level of wages offered in the capital is much lower today. It is located near 115 thousand.
In other words, half of Muscovites receive less than this amount. Moreover, the gap continues to widen: if in 2025 the average income exceeded the median estimates by about 50 thousand rubles (about 28%), then in the first four months of 2026 this difference increased by more than one and a half times to 80 thousand.
The reason for this discrepancy lies in the very structure of the Moscow economy, explained Freedom Global analyst Vladimir Chernov. It is in the capital that the head offices of the largest banks, IT companies, corporations and financial organizations are concentrated. Top managers and the highest paid specialists work here, whose salaries significantly increase the average. At the same time, it is strongly affected by large bonus payments, added Ekaterina Kosareva, managing partner of the VMT Consult agency.
The capital is traditionally characterized by the highest concentration of workers with ultra-high incomes. Therefore, the gap between average and median salaries here is much larger than in most Russian regions, agreed Dmitry Zemlyansky, director of the IPEI Research Center for Spatial Analysis and Regional Diagnostics at the Presidential Academy.
In general, the median salary in Russia lags behind the average by 30-40%. But staff hunger is gradually reducing this gap: in 2000, the incomes of the top 10% of the highest-paid workers exceeded the incomes of the bottom 10% by more than 30 times, and by 2025 this figure has decreased to 13 times. In Moscow, however, due to the high concentration of ultra-high salaries, the stratification remains deeper, the expert noted.
Who feels the difference the most?
The difference between official statistics and real incomes is most painfully felt by representatives of mass professions, said Vladislav Bukharsky, Director of Sovereign and Regional Ratings at Expert RA agency. First of all, this applies to employees of education, municipal services and other public sector sectors, where salaries are growing much slower than in high-income segments of the economy, Dmitry Zemlyansky said.
This difference is confirmed by statistics. According to SuperJob, sales consultants in Moscow receive about 80 thousand rubles, locksmiths — 110 thousand, electricians — 125 thousand. This is significantly lower than the average salary in the city.
At the same time, Java programmers receive around 340 thousand rubles, top managers and specialists in the field of strategies and investments — more than 200 thousand. It is these high incomes that "pull out" the average statistics, creating the illusion of well-being for the majority of workers.
At the same time, the massive office staff is in a difficult situation — administrators, call center operators, novice accountants and lawyers, added Vera Fadeeva, Director of the HR Department of the Cifra Group. Automation and remote employment put pressure on their incomes: when a Moscow company opens a vacancy for a remote format, it attracts candidates from all over Russia who are willing to work for 40-60 thousand rubles. This severely limits the bargaining power of the capital's applicants.
At the same time, even a salary close to the median does not always allow you to feel financially confident. So, according to Izvestia calculations based on data from the United Credit Bureau, the average monthly mortgage payment in Moscow today is about 96 thousand rubles, and in the Moscow region — 79 thousand. Moreover, banks, as a rule, do not approve a loan if the payments on it exceed half of the borrower's income.
A similar situation is developing in the rental housing market. According to Avito Real Estate, the average cost of long-term apartment rental in Moscow has reached 74 thousand rubles per month. If you focus on the median salary, then after paying for housing, a person has about 40 thousand rubles left for all other expenses — food, transport, utilities and household purchases. At the same time, the average price of a grocery basket for a month, according to the operational estimates of the EuroCredit service.<url>", now amounts to about 9 thousand rubles per person.
What is the danger of a salary gap?
The high difference between average and median salaries gradually reduces citizens' confidence in official data and increases the sense of injustice, experts say. Inflated figures create a false impression of what residents of the capital can actually afford, Ekaterina Kosareva explained. These figures are used not only by people planning to move to Moscow, but also by businesses. As a result, companies may overestimate the solvency of buyers, and homeowners may overestimate the cost of rent.
At the same time, there is a growing shortage of personnel in lower—paid areas such as education, healthcare, trade and light industry, said Elena Kiselyova, an analyst at the Institute for Integrated Strategic Studies. Potential employees prefer to go to a place where they can earn significantly more, and it is increasingly difficult for socially important industries to compete for specialists.
With a high income difference, people are more likely to change professions, move to more profitable industries, or even switch to informal employment, added Olga Lebedinskaya, PhD in Economics, Associate Professor of Statistics at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. As a result, the shortage of personnel is gradually spreading even to those areas where it was practically nonexistent before.
For the majority of working Muscovites, the gap between average and median salaries means that official statistics are no longer a guideline for assessing their own financial situation, experts have warned. As a result, people make decisions based on inflated expectations. For example, they are planning to move to Moscow, focusing on data that does not reflect real incomes. This distorts consumer behavior, migration flows, and the labor market as a whole.
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