Returns on skills of IT specialists in Russian cities based on job vacancy data

The article assesses the returns on skills of IT specialists in Russian cities of different sizes. The empirical basis of the study consists of open data on job vacancies published on the HeadHunter platform in March—April 2025. The paper describes the data processing procedures, including the unification of skill descriptions and their transformation into discrete variables. The main research method is hedonic wage modeling in the labor market, which allows for estimating the impact of various factors on the salaries of information technology professionals. The econometric modeling employs a two-step OLS approach with Heckman correction and sequential inclusion of variables into the baseline specification. The results show that professional IT skills, personal characteristics, managerial skills, and employment in Moscow, the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, and cities located outside the Russian Federation have a statistically significant positive effect on IT specialists’ wages. Employment in cities with populations between 250 thousand and one million people, as well as social skills, have a significant negative effect. For professional IT skills, significant positive effects were identified in Moscow, the Moscow region, and St. Petersburg, indicating that the city effect remains even after accounting for cross-city differences in skill valuation. The main findings of the study are relevant for the development and implementation of education, regional, and migration policies aimed at fostering the training and mobility of highly qualified employees. The proposed approach to working with relatively small but easily accessible datasets can also be applied in expert HR analytics, for example, to identify differences among local labor markets.