Wages for IT specialists in Russia have largely stopped growing, with median pay in the sector staying flat year-on-year in the second half of 2025, the Kommersant business daily reported Monday, citing a study by recruitment platform Habr.
Russia’s IT sector, one of the country’s largest and most developed white-collar industries, has historically offered higher pay and better working conditions than many other fields.
The median monthly salary in 2025 stood at 183,000 rubles ($2,361), unchanged from a year earlier. The slowdown was driven mainly by weaker wage growth in the regions, where pay averaged 159,000 rubles ($2,051) a month.
In Moscow, IT specialists earn around 230,000 rubles ($2,967), while salaries in St. Petersburg average about 200,000 rubles ($2,580).
On an annual basis, wage growth in the sector lagged inflation, which reached 5.6% last year, according to official statistics.
Salaries in Moscow rose by just 4%, while in Nizhny Novgorod they increased by only 1%, meaning rising prices have begun to erode real incomes for IT workers.
Alexander Averin, HR director at IT ecosystem Lukomorye, told Kommersant that income growth was increasingly aligned with real labor productivity rather than the long-held assumption that “everyone in IT earns 20-50% more every year.”
“There are no longer mass pay rises,” he said.
The trend reflects broader economic pressures as companies revise and cut IT budgets amid rising uncertainty, said Ksenia Zamukhovskaya, HR director at Postgres Professional.
She told Kommersant that employers are becoming more cautious about hiring and salary reviews.
The number of CVs per vacancy now averages just over 18, an unusually high level for the sector that reflects the growing competition for jobs.
“This type of thing has been unheard-of in the IT labor market for many years,” said Aigyun Kurbanova, founder of the School of Project Management.
The stagnation of median wages combined with their failure to keep pace with inflation marks a predictable phase of maturity for Russia’s IT market following its structural overhaul, said Olga Vostrikova, a project lead in the operational efficiency practice at Strategy Partners.
Averin sad he expects wages to rise by no more than 5-7% annually in the near term, with double-digit increases becoming rare and limited to highly specialized areas like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and complex infrastructure.
Postgres Professional, however, expects wage stagnation or even targeted salary cuts in the first half of 2026.
“Much will depend in the second half of the year on macroeconomic indicators and companies’ willingness to ramp up IT investment again,” Kommersant quoted the company as saying.
Read this story in Russian at The Moscow Times' Russian service.
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