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KSE Institute finds that sign-on bonuses for Russian contract soldiers now total around RUB 1 trillion annually, while the wage gains from labor scarcity under mobilization scenarios would amount to only RUB 20–200 billion. A call-up of 500,000 could add 0.1–0.2 percentage points to real wage growth, and one million 0.6–1.2 points. KSE Institute has released a new paper, “Fewer Bodies or Cheaper Bodies? What a New Wave of Russian Mobilization Would Do to the Wages of Those Who Stay Behind.” Drawing on 16 months of Russian vacancy data, regional decrees, and casualty records, the study estimates how a new call-up could affect civilian wages. Mobilization would remove more men from civilian employment, but it would also allow the state to replace costly contract recruitment with compulsory service. The study finds that the loss of contract payments would likely outweigh the wage gains from greater labor scarcity. Russia’s military industry has cut hiring sharply. Over the past year, weapons and aviation manufacturers reduced advertised positions by 37%, other military industries by 14%, and drone makers by 13%, while civilian vacancies rose by 7%. At the same time, 94% of advertised military positions require neither experience nor qualifications, compared with 46% of civilian vacancies, meaning the army largely recruits from the same low-skill segment of the labor market.