Monitoring of hidden wages: specific characteristics, prevalence, motivation

The article analyzes the results of sociological research of hidden forms of labor remuneration carried out in the Novosibirsk Oblast in 2008, 2010 and 2015. The purpose for the research is to analyze the performance of hidden wages prevalence. The applied empirical methods include: a survey (type - questionnaire), analysis of documents, as well as a number of general scientific methods (analysis and synthesis, generalization and comparison) and others. The novelty of the research lies in a special approach to the definition of the research object - the unemployed who applied to the employment service for assistance in finding employment; in identifying specific characteristics of shadow wages and their combinations, in assigning the employees receiving these types of payment to precariat united by anomie, anxiety, despair, alienation and lack of stability guarantees, as well as in obtaining new empirical data. The article analyzes specific characteristics such as duration, formality and informality, low level of official pay and high level of shadow wages, lack of prospects for the future and stability of current financial status and others. The article also focuses on the involvement of employees in this form of payment, its scale, performance, motivation, etc. The results indicate that hidden payments are becoming a widely used and sustained socio-economic phenomenon. Shadow wages are most prevalent in trade, construction, service sector; in recent years, it has become more common in production and processing of agricultural products, public catering, transport. Shadow salary is determined by the mutual interests of the employer and the employee and is accompanied by huge economic and social costs. In this case, the substitution of legal, socio-labor relations between employees and employers takes place, with civil agreements excluding interaction with the state as a subject of such relations. The authors propose a number of measures to legalize hidden wages and reduce their prevalence. In the future, the use of this approach will enable the measurement of hidden wage performance and develop measures for its reduction.