Wage discrimination against foreign workers in Russia

Abstract

We try to determine with the help of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique whether foreign workers are discriminated against in Russia. We use the Russian Ministry of Labor (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. The average salary of Russian workers with the same level of productivity as migrants exceeds migrants' average salary by 40%. The industries in which the workers are employed have made most substantial contribution to the discrimination gap. Moreover, there is evidence that the lower salaries of foreign workers do not reduce the salaries of Russians employed in similar positions.