In accordance with the right to remuneration for work, the problems of legal regulation of wages in Russia are analyzed. The relevance of the study of this problem is explained by the insufficient effectiveness of incentives that, in conditions of the spread of mainly intellectual, informational work, will encourage a certain professional group to perform its characteristic labor functions with the highest efficiency to increase public welfare. The goal of solidary participation in the fair distribution of labor results, as well as in its payment, is determined by the direction of development of the state that it elects. The highest social value in the Russian Federation is a person, his life and health, honor and dignity, inviolability and security. The so-called labor theory of value, expressed by A. Smith, developed by D. Ricardo and K. Marx, according to which the value of goods and services depends on the labor invested in them, has been studied. This idea was transformed by E. Durkheim into the characteristics of an employment contract, indicating that it is only considered concluded when the mutual services of the parties have an equivalent value. It is the employment contract, according to the authors, that acts as the main legal form of realization of the constitutional right to work and its remuneration. The state and contractual regulation of labor, the ratio of public and private methods of regulation in the field of remuneration are considered. Attention is paid to the problem of further improvement of the financial situation of the employee on the basis of social partnership. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ILO Conventions, standards in the field of remuneration are analyzed. The authors emphasize that remuneration needs state regulatory and legal regulation, first of all, in the revision of existing standards of remuneration. The progressive experience of legal regulation of remuneration for work in national and international legislation is investigated. Modern science considers one of the determining factors of the well-being of society to be the ability of the distribution mechanism to approach the correspondence between a person's contribution to the increase of well-being and his remuneration. In order to solve the problem posed in this study, the authors propose the need for a harmonious combination of innovative reform and the introduction of elements of world models of various employee remuneration systems, which will ensure the adaptation of domestic labor legislation and the achievement of modern world standards in the legal regulation of remuneration for work.