4:54 pm, November 17, 2025

Source: iStories

Russia is seeing a rapid rise in unpaid wages: arrears have quadrupled in a year, and workers in construction, mining, and even strategic defense plants say they’re going months without pay. Official statistics show wage delays climbing sharply, even as experts debate whether the surge signals a deeper economic problem or simply reflects a statistical fluctuation. The independent outlet iStories spoke with workers and looked at economists’ assessments to better understand what’s happening. Meduza shares an abridged translation of their reporting.

“The situation is dire. We haven’t been paid in three months, and nobody can say when the money will come. People can’t make their loan payments — everyone has families,” a foreman in the molding shop at the Kingisepp Machine-Building Plant (KMZ) told iStories. “We have nothing to live on,” confirmed a service engineer who hasn’t received the bonuses that make up most of his income since August. According to workers, the plant is seeing mass layoffs, but even as they leave, people aren’t able to collect their final paychecks.

KMZ is a strategic enterprise that fulfills contracts for the Russian Navy and the National Guard. Its wage arrears may total at least 300 million rubles ($3.7 million), Fontanka reported.

Across Russia (excluding small businesses), wage debt reached 1.95 billion rubles ($24 million) at the end of September — a fourfold increase over the past year, according to Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat).

Who in Russia isn’t getting paid

Rosstat says nearly half of all wage arrears (44.1 percent) are concentrated in the construction sector. For example, workers building the M-12 highway in the Republic of Bashkortostan, a new student campus in Oryol, the Krasnoyarsk metro, and residential buildings in Nizhnevartovsk have all reported delayed pay this year.

Last week, roughly 300 construction workers at a nuclear reactor site in the Ulyanovsk region went on strike over unpaid wages. Some “no longer see any positive prospects, fear the company will go bankrupt, and have already filed resignation letters,” one employee said.

Mining companies account for the second-largest share of wage debt (17.5 percent). In one of the most high-profile cases this year, more than 500 miners were laid off from a coal operation in the Kemerovo region.

In reality, though, examples can be found in almost every sector. Oil workers, hockey players, teachers, and medical staff have all faced wage delays. In the Irkutsk region, a boiler plant worker who hadn’t been paid for months was forced to sell his horse so he could take his child to the hospital.

(C)MEDUZA 2025