Novy Urengoy, Salekhard, and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk: Experts rank Russian cities by salary levels.

The ranking included 100 of the largest cities. To rank them, RIA Novosti experts compared official average wages with the cost of a fixed consumer basket of goods and services.

The fixed consumer basket is a special, unified set of goods and services used to compare purchasing power across different regions of Russia. It consists of 83 items. According to the list, a Russian needs, for example, just over 40 kilograms of meat, 180 eggs, 10 liters of vodka, 196 public transportation rides, six haircuts, 12 bars of laundry soap, and 52 boxes of matches per year.

It turned out that in the three cities that top the rating, the average monthly salary can buy more than five standard consumer sets. This New Urengoy, Salekhard и Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Also in the top ten of the rating were: Anadyr, Moscow, Surgut, Magadan, Yakutsk, Красногорск и Khimki. They close out the ranking of a hundred points. Cherkessk, Vladikavkaz, Elista, formidable и NalchikOverall, in most Russian cities included in the study, the average net salary is sufficient for approximately three fixed consumer baskets.

Russians no longer agree with RIA Novosti's findings: "That's a lie. A salary in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky of 143,000 rubles is at most one-third of the population. More empty talk." "It's ridiculous to discuss average salaries: the rector at KnASU earns 870,000 rubles a month, while I earn the minimum wage as a department head."

The main reason such rankings provoke widespread mistrust and anger is the calculation method itself. Given the vast income gap, the concept of "average salary" is completely unrepresentative.

According to official data, the average nominal salary of employees in Russia by the end of 2024 was 99 rubles. In the first half of 2025, the official average salary was 107 rubles.