Public-Private Wage Gap in Russia Before and After COVID -19

This study examines the wage gap in the public and private sectors before and after the Coronavirus infection in Russia. The relevance of the work is due to the fact that the issue of the “gap” has existed for a long time and various measures of the Russian Government are still in continuing implementation, such as increasing the guaranteed minimum wage and mandatory indexation of wages on average, however, they do not efficiently lead to expected results. When entering the labor market, former University graduates cannot rationally choose a sector. In other words, they are completely led by their desires for self-realization in a particular sphere, since are not aware that certain job occupations provide less outcome on investment in human capital, regardless of the amount of invested labor. The purpose of this study is to examine wage differences between public and private sector workers before and after COVID-19 infection, as well as to identify other factors that influence wages, such as education level, gender and age. The study estimates several empirical OLS models based on the extended Mincer equation. The resulting coefficients and individual means are used for the Oaxaca-Blinder method for the two groups.