Salaries and Social Status in USSR

Officially USSR proclaimed equality of all people, but as one joke says, some were more equal than others.

In practice there was a complex hierarchy based on perceived value of one's work. On top of the official social pyramid were actually factory workers and miners. Government pampered them a lot and called them best and most important and so on. They were even paid better too, especially miners. Miners and factory employees had highest standing and highest official salaries.

That however did not mean they had highest quality of life or standards of living. Some other groups had better living standards for reasons I will explain below.

In contrast cleaners, street swipes and such had low standing and were indeed seen and dumb and uneducated.

Another sector that was look down upon was retail. They were seen as speculates who only peddle goods and do not produce anything.

Hard to tell where construction workers would be in that hierarchy, but likely somewhat below of factory workers.

White collar workers still had better working conditions and, in some cases, could steal shit so they often had it better.

In general one's ability to steal something from a warehouse or such had a much greater impact on standard of living and quality of life than official salary. Official salaries only ranged from 120 to 330 rubles or so.

Some white-collar workers however were seen as more important than the others, for examples military engineers who design weapons.

In general, there was a complicated hierarchy of how valuable or important was one's work seen.

Party members had the best lifestyle though. Their official salaries were small, and they had to pay a party membership fee out of it. However, they had a lot of perks of office to compensate for that: state cars, chaffers, premium government accommodation and summer houses, party owned seaside resorts, even special stores for party members only and so on. Because of all these perks Communist Party was the wealthiest organization in the USSR.

All that compromised politics as politicians were focused on making sure they will not lose out in shifting web of informal alliances rather than represented people or stood for anything. Because if they lose out and removed from office, they will lose all these juicy perks and become dirt poor.

Another group who had real high income and standards of living were smugglers of western goods. They could make a lot of money and be underground millionaires. There was risk however if they were exposed, as western goods were illegal. Some smugglers were even sentenced to death and executed. Smuggling Levi's jeans where as bad as smuggling cocaine as far as Soviet law was concerned.