AI Users Earn Up to 41.8% More Than Non-Users
Research conducted by economists at HSE University has revealed a significant correlation between the regular use of GenAI in the workplace and higher pay among Russian employees. The study found that individuals who frequently use GenAI in their professional activities earn notably more than those who reject these new tools or resort to them occasionally. The salary premium for highly qualified specialists reaches 41.8%. The article was published in the Voprosy Ekonomiki journal.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence are set to transform the world of work, as they are capable of performing tasks previously carried out exclusively by humans. This shift is likely to have a significant impact on white-collar professionals. In the future, the functionality of more than half of all professions may change due to the introduction of GenAI. This could result in a substantial rise in labour productivity. Research indicates that AI can reduce the time spent writing text by 40% and writing code by 50%.
However, productivity growth does not necessarily result in higher employee salaries. Sergey Roshchin and Ksenia Rozhkova, researchers at the HSE Laboratory for Labour Market Studies of the Faculty of Economic Sciences, and Yana Roshchina, a research fellow at the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences, have investigated whether employees of Russian companies can earn more thanks to artificial intelligence.
The researchers analysed data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey for 2023 and 2024, covering almost 10,000 employees. The survey revealed that the use of AI in Russia remains niche, with only 11% of employed people using it occasionally, and a mere 1.6% using it regularly. It is important to note that the majority of users are under 32.5 years and hold a university degree.
AI users are primarily employed in the IT sector, where 36% of employees use AI on a regular basis. This is followed by the media, law, finance, science, and culture. In industries where highly qualified employees are not a prerequisite, the use of AI is minimal.
Ksenia Rozhkova
The primary analysis demonstrated that employees utilising AI in their work earn 13.4% more than those who do not. If the model takes into account pre-2022 salary levels—that is, before the mass adoption of AI—in order to separate the effect of using the technology from the workplace itself, the bonus in the sample as a whole is reduced to 6%. At the same time, the premium gap between regular and occasional AI users is growing sharply. ‘For example, we can talk about fully delegating work processes to AI, which significantly increases individual productivity,' says Ksenia Rozhkova, Senior Research Fellow at the HSE Laboratory for Labour Market Studies.
The most detailed model, which takes into account, among other things, an employee’s personal qualities, shows that the occasional use of AI no longer brings any salary bonus at all, and only regular use matters: in this case, the bonus increases to 17.2%, and for the most highly qualified employees it even reaches 41.8%. These results indicate that returns on AI are higher in areas with greater potential for technological use, such as programming. The authors explain that even in this case, regular use of artificial intelligence significantly increases employee productivity, which in turn leads to salary increases. With infrequent use, there is no demonstrable increase in productivity or income.
Furthermore, this increase may be only temporary. ‘The bonus may shrink or even disappear, as has already happened with other skills. In today’s professional environment, every employee is expected to have basic computer literacy, whereas at one time they were a competitive advantage in the labour market. Similarly, as AI becomes more widespread, it may become just another requirement and no longer be a significant source of additional income. This may be due to changes in the nature of the professions themselves and the tasks performed by employees,' explains Ksenia Rozhkova.
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