No people and thousands of vacancies: what is happening to the labor market in Ukraine?

In May, the labor market resembled a desert: the number of job seekers and their competition for vacancies are falling rapidly. Instead, employers are offering more and more vacancies and are not even thinking of slowing down. Read more in the Work.ua study.

What the May statistics tell us

The dominant phenomenon in the labor market in May was a shortage of personnel. There are fewer and fewer candidates, while competition for vacancies is decreasing.

At the same time, employers have posted a record number of vacancies on Work.ua since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. And it looks like the summer of 2024 will not be a "low season" by any means.

To overcome the staff shortage, employers are increasingly willing to offer jobs to pensioners and people with disabilities. But is this enough to attract specialists to their teams?

Instead, job offers from the Defense Forces received 10% more responses in May than in April. This increase was due to responses from men of conscription age. This may be due to the adoption and publication of the law on mobilization.

Another record - more than 113,000 vacancies offered to Ukrainians

In May, employers posted 113,016 job offers on Work.ua, which is 2% more than in April. This is the third month in a row that the labor market has had more than 100,000 vacancies, and the second month that it has had a record number of job offers since the start of the full-scale invasion.

In May, the largest increase in vacancies was in Ivano-Frankivsk, Cherkasy, Zaporizhzhia (+3%), Sumy and Kyiv (+2%) regions. The latter also showed the largest increase among the leading regions in terms of the number of job offers. In contrast, Odesa, Dnipro, and Kharkiv regions, the number of jobs increased by only 1%. In Lviv region, the number of vacancies even decreased by less than 1%.

Employers are preparing for the hot summer season

In May, the Service Sector category once again won the top spot in terms of the number of vacancies - 21,092 (+3% compared to April). But in general, the dynamics in the top ten categories is uneven: in some places, the number of jobs has decreased.

• "Working specialties, production" - 19 271 vacancies, +1% compared to April;
• "Sales, purchasing" - 14,179, -2%;
• "Retail trade - 13,628, +2%;
• "Hotel and restaurant business, tourism - 11,903, +3%;
• "Logistics, warehousing, foreign trade - 11,297, +5%;
• "Administration, middle management - 9,767, -0.5%;
• "Transportation, automotive business - 9,169, +2%;
• "Medicine, pharmaceuticals - 7,775, +1%;
• "Accounting, audit - 7,710, -0.2%.

However, the category "Security and safety" became the leader in terms of vacancy growth due to vacancies in the Defense Forces.

It is interesting that a significant increase in vacancies in May was in the category of "Personnel Management, HR". We can see that employers are looking for recruitment specialists ahead of the summer, which is traditionally considered a low season in the labor market. Presumably, the shortage of personnel forces companies to continue recruiting even in summer.

It is noteworthy that the number of jobs in the categories of Service, Hospitality, Tourism, Construction, and Architecture has also increased. This is typical for the summer season.

Another seasonal trend is an increase in the number of vacancies for students (+6% compared to April) and people without experience (+4%). Analytics also shows that the shortage of staff encourages employers to be more flexible and take a broader view of the labor market. Therefore, they are increasingly offering vacancies to veterans (+14%), people with disabilities (+11%), and pensioners (+19%).

However, the number of remote jobs and job offers requiring knowledge of English remained virtually unchanged in May.

Competition has fallen again - the lowest level in 3.5 years

In May, job seekers updated or created 304,378 resumes on Work.ua, which is 5% less than in April. At the same time, the number of job offers increased. Accordingly, competition among job seekers has decreased again. This trend has been going on for five months. Moreover, the average competition among job seekers for a vacancy in May was the lowest since January 2021.

This trend was also noted by the National Bank of Ukraine in its Inflation Report: "The labor supply is limited by further migration abroad, mobilization, the slow adaptation of IDPs to new places of residence, and growing imbalances in the labor market. At the same time, a smaller resume may indicate a successful job search and employment growth for Ukrainians, which is confirmed by the survey results."

Traditionally, competition for remote positions is the highest, although the number of responses is gradually decreasing. Among the offline job offers, Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Lviv, Kharkiv, and Volyn regions are leading in terms of competition. The lowest competition is consistently seen in Kherson, Zakarpattia, and Chernivtsi regions.

The general decline in competition has slightly reduced the degree of tension in IT: competition for the most popular positions (Front-end programmer, coder, web designer, tester) has decreased, but is still 10-20 times higher than average. There is also high competition for creative and digital positions, such as screenwriter, casting manager, copywriter, online store administrator, and content specialist.

The number of job seekers has increased among educators and hotel and restaurant workers.

In May, job seekers updated or created 304,378 resumes on Work.ua, which is 5% less than in April. Despite the overall decline, there was an increase in the number of candidates in some categories: "Education, Science" (+4%), "Insurance" (+2%), "Top Management, Senior Management", "Hotel and Restaurant Business, Tourism" (+1%).

In the context of certain positions, we also see an increase in the number of resumes from educators: teacher-organizer, computer teacher, music teacher, German teacher. In addition, the number of bartenders/baristas (+2%) and waiters (+14%) has increased, which also corresponds to seasonal trends.

The sociological portrait of a candidate in the labor market has stabilized - from month to month we see the same numbers.

However, the closer we get to summer, the more underage candidates are on the labor market. In May, their number increased to 4,711 (+16% compared to April). Presumably, young people will be looking for seasonal jobs. The number of job seekers of retirement age also increased slightly (+1% compared to April, 4,705 job seekers). In other demographic groups, we see a decline in sync with the general trend of a decrease in the number of job seekers in the labor market.

The highest salary growth is in managerial positions

In May, the average salary for vacancies on Work.ua amounted to UAH 20,000. This figure has remained unchanged for 4 months. Among the leading regions, only Dnipropetrovs'k region saw an increase in average salaries (UAH 19,500, +500 UAH compared to April).

However, according to the NBU experts, the shortage of staff will push employers to raise wages: "Difficulties in finding skilled workers by employers in the face of economic recovery will lead to further wage increases in the private sector. Therefore, as early as 2025, real wages in the economy will exceed their pre-war level and will continue to rise, in particular due to increased competition for labor with foreign employers."

A more detailed analysis of the categories still shows fluctuations. For example, the average salary in the Insurance category has been decreasing for the second month in a row (UAH 23,500, -5%).

At the sametime, we have growth in the following categories:

• "Top Management, Senior Management - UAH 40,000, +10% compared to April;
• "Security and safety - UAH 37,500, +7%;
• "Construction, Architecture - UAH 25,000, +6%;
• "Design, creativity - UAH 21,000, +5%;
• "Culture, music, show business - UAH 21,000, +5%;
• "Agriculture, agribusiness - UAH 21,500, +5%;
• "Sales, purchasing - 26,000 UAH, +4%;
• "Finance, Banking - UAH 17,500, +4%.

In May, the highest average salaries (except for management positions and IT) were offered by specialists in the Defense Forces of Ukraine - an average of UAH 70,000. Among civilian professions, the highest salaries were offered to media buyers (UAH 50,000), international drivers (UAH 47,500), straighteners (UAH 42,500), endodontists, realtors (UAH 40,000), reinforcing steel workers (UAH 37,500), business analysts (UAH 35,500), and media producers (UAH 35,300).

The number of responses to Defense Forces vacancies from men of military age has increased

General labor market trends are also reflected in military recruitment. However, there were some peculiarities in May.

1. In May, 621 units had at least one vacancy on work.ua/zsu/, which is 4% more than in April. The number of job offers, in turn, increased by 15% to 4,770 vacancies.
2. In May, the largest increase in vacancies (+23%) was in the category "Medicine, pharmaceuticals". It pushed the Telecommunications and Communications category out of the top three. The largest number of vacancies, as before, is in the Security and Safety and Transportation and Auto Business categories.
3. For the first time, the number of responses to vacancies from the Defense Forces increased - in May, job seekers sent 16,764 responses, which is 10% more than in April. Despite this, the competition indicator fell, as the number of responses did not keep pace with the number of vacancies.
4. Among the job seekers who responded to the Defense Forces vacancies in May, 35% were women and 65% were men.
5. In May, the number of responses from men aged 25 to 55 increased - such job seekers sent 19% more responses than in April.

Yevheniia Kuzenkova is an editor at Work.ua