Economics
Cheapest Labor Since Tsars Ruled Russia a Draw for Samsung, Ikea
- Russian wages below salaries in China, Brazil, Czech Republic
- Eurasian Development Bank sees Europe’s ‘factory’ in the works
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Made in Russia and coming soon to a store shelf near you: washing machines, chewing gum and possibly much else.
A combination of the country’s worst currency crisis since 1998 and an unprecedented slide in real wages for most of the past two years has resulted in salaries that have become “broadly competitive” with China’s for the first time since the tsarist era ended a century ago, according to Renaissance Capital. In dollar terms, Russian wages last year fell to almost half the level in former members of the Eastern bloc such as the Czech Republic, the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics estimates.