Financial crisis of 1998 could be considered as a starting point of the new stage of the transformation of both, Russian economy and individual perception of well-being. Rather successful macroeconomic performance of the country in the beginning of the 2000s and recognition of the market economy status by the end of 2002 coincided with the growth of average satisfaction level of population. At the same time, satisfaction of the employed subgroup of the population was growing not faster, and sometimes even slower, than for all the other labour market categories. In the paper, it is made an attempt to figure out whether this phenomenon could be explained by the particular importance of inter-personal/family/time period comparisons of her relative position performed for the subjective well-being evaluation, especially if employed and non-employed sub-samples of population are considered.