How do they live in Volgograd region?

One of these days the statisticians of Volgograd published their recent annual report mainly devoted to the average wages in Volgograd region. Probably statistics knows everything. But maybe it does not tell everything. Here are some interesting things we got to know from this report. During last two months, the wages of industry workers increased by 43 percent in comparison with last year. In other words, their wages make up 3,173 rubles (113 dollars). The most prosperous are the specialist of fuel industry whose salary averages almost 13,000 rubles (464 dollars). Then, with a big gap comes the salary of workers of glass and porcelain industry, which makes up approximately 4,667 rubles (167 dollars). This well-to-do trio is accomplished with non-ferrous metallurgy: average salary is 4,127 rubles (147 dollars). There are also “les miserables”. The workers of light industry get the most modest salary today - 941 rubles on average (34 dollars). So do workers, involved in microbiological production - 1174 rubles (42 dollars), woodworking and pulp and paper industries - 1418 rubles (50 dollars). According to the statistics, the salary in all industries has increased at the least by 4 percent. At most it has increased by 70 percent (in microbiological production and in the factories of ferrous metallurgy). But these figures do not impress. Why there was not such a big gap between the salary of a simple worker and the one of the factory director in notorious Soviet epoch, but nowadays, these two sums are incomparable. Though let us compare: 150,000-200,000 rubles (5,360-7,140 dollars) and 1,000-1,500 (36-54 dollars). Therefore the notion “average wages” does not mean anything.