The issue of raising wages in Kazakhstan remains relevant, especially against the backdrop of statistics showing that real incomes are not keeping pace with inflation. Economist Ruslan Sultanov, in his Telegram channel "Economic Literacy," explained why the state can directly influence the incomes of public sector employees but lacks the levers to force salary increases in the private sector, reports infohub.kz.
According to the expert, the state can only directly decide to raise salaries for those specialists whose wages are paid from the state budget. These include teachers, doctors, police officers, civil servants, and other public sector workers. In this case, the mechanism is simple: allocate money in the budget, and salaries go up. For private companies, such as cafes, IT firms, or construction organizations, this approach is not applicable.
Sultanov explains that salaries in private companies are paid from revenue, and the size of the salary depends on labor productivity and market conditions. The state can set the minimum wage, negotiate with businesses in exchange for subsidies, or conduct talks, but it cannot issue decrees to raise salaries in specific companies. If the government forced a small cafe to pay its waiters twice as much, it would lead to the establishment closing, price increases, or staff cuts—none of which makes workers richer.
The expert notes that real wage growth in the private sector is possible through changing the structure of the economy: developing productive non-resource industries where labor creates greater value. Currently, only 31% of added value goes to labor costs on average, and this figure has remained almost unchanged since 2022. The remaining funds are directed to owners' profits, equipment depreciation, taxes, and rent.
The shares of spending on wages and equipment vary by industry. In capital-intensive industries, such as mining, a large portion of revenue goes to expensive equipment, and the remainder is distributed among a small number of workers, so salaries there are high. In labor-intensive industries, such as agriculture, more is spent on workers, but overall productivity and absolute salary levels are lower.
Thus, when the state aims to increase the share of wages in the economy, it is not about redistributing funds from businesses to workers, but about structural changes that promote labor productivity growth and create greater value in non-resource sectors.