Wage Dicrimination Against Foreign Workers in Russia

Abstract

We try to find out with the help of the Oaxaca—Blinder decomposition technique whether foreign workers are discriminated against in Russia. We use the Russian Ministry of Labour (Rostrud) data on migrants' applications and the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS, provided by the Higher School of Economics) for the period 2009-2013. We show that there is significant discrimination against foreign workers. Average salary of Russian workers with migrants' productivity exceeds migrants' average salary by 40%. Industry of employment has substantial contribution to the discrimination gap. Moreover, there exists evidence that lower salaries of foreign workers do not reduce salaries of Russians employed in similar positions.