Jobs and salaries: what's happening in the Ukrainian labor market

It is a tradition in the labor market to start the year with a job search. Therefore, 2025 has activated candidates - they have sent a record number of responses to vacancies during the period of staff shortage. However, employers are in no hurry to reward them with salary increases.

Key findings of the study

The year 2025 started dynamically in the labor market: the number of vacancies increased by 7%. The most noticeable increase was for beauty professionals: massage therapists, laser hair removal specialists, hairdressers, and manicurists.

Despite the shortage of staff, employers remain demanding of candidates: in January, the number of vacancies requiring work experience increased by 10%.

Another important trend is that there was a 17% increase in job offers where the company prefers veterans. In January, there were already 3,742 such vacancies.

At the beginning of the year, we recorded an extraordinary activity of candidates. In January, the number of job seekers and responses from them on Work.ua was the highest since the market began to experience a shortage of personnel. The motivation to start a new life with the new year is working, despite all the challenges of today.

Job seekers' demand for remote work has become even more pronounced: in January, the competition for remote jobs increased by almost half. Perhaps for the first time, the most popular job openings were not IT professions (coder and Front-end Developer), but rather direct managers and chat specialists.

In terms of salary, the median salary remained unchanged in January at UAH 24,000.

Job seekers are offered more than 90,000 vacancies

In the first month of 2025, employers posted 94,985 vacancies on Work.ua. This is 7% more job offers than in December. This figure is almost the same as the number of jobs in January 2022, the last month before the full-scale invasion. Back then, there were 97,349 vacancies on the labor market.

Although we see an almost complete recovery in terms of the number of jobs, the structural distribution of vacancies has changed. There are still far fewer vacancies in the frontline regions than there were before the full-scale invasion.

The number of vacancies in the leading regions in terms of the number of jobs increased unevenly in January:

• Kyiv - 31,489 vacancies, +4% compared to December;
• Lviv - 8,320, +10%;
• Dnipropetrovska - 8,126, +2%;
• Odesa - 5,323, +10%;
• Kharkiv - 2,949, +13%.

The labor market is ready to lose weight on Monday

In January, job seekers were offered the most jobs in three categories:

• "Working specialties, production" - 15,932 vacancies, +5% compared to December;
• "Service sector" - 13,927, +6%;
• "Sales, purchasing" - 11,888, +11%.

Compared to the previous month, the number of vacancies in the Beauty, Fitness, and Sports category has increased significantly - by 29%! It seems that in 2025, especially many people decided to start playing sports in the new year.

But in fact, the Beauty, Fitness, and Sports category was replenished mainly with vacancies for beauty industry workers:

• massage therapist (+62% compared to December, 261 vacancies)
• laser hair removal specialist (+38%, 207);
• hairdresser (+32%, 358);
• manicurist (+28%, 455).

There hasn't been such high competition for almost 2 years

Important news for all employers: in January, the labor market had perhaps the largest number of candidates since the beginning of 2023, when the period of staff shortages began. As a result, we recorded almost 1.5 million responses to vacancies in January. This is 39% more than in December.

Job seekers do not break the tradition of starting a new life with the new year, including looking for a new job in January. We see this trend in the competition graph. The last time this indicator was at such a high level was in April 2023.

Every month we emphasize that competition for remote work is 5 times higher than the market average. This is one of the most effective tools to overcome the staff shortage. But in January, competition for remote work broke all records and increased by 49% compared to December.

And while the most competitive positions used to be layout designer and front-end developer, now the leaders are direct manager and chat specialist. These are professions that involve processing incoming customer requests, usually on social media.

Instead, the lowest competition is seen for vacancies in the categories of Security, Safety, Working Specialties, Production, Construction, Architecture, Transportation, Automotive, Medicine, Pharmaceuticals.

As for the demographic profile of job seekers, the share of women and young people under 35 increased by several percentage points in the labor market.

Salaries increased only in some categories

Perhaps the only important indicator that did not change in January 2025 was salary. The median remained at UAH 24,000. But we still see progress in some regions and industries. In particular, average salaries increased in Kyiv (UAH 26,000, +750 UAH compared to December) and Kharkiv (UAH 21,000, +1,000 UAH) regions.

Also, the offered incomes in the categories have increased:

• "Top management, senior management" - UAH 47,500, +6%;
• "Beauty, fitness, sports - UAH 25,000, +4%;
• "Insurance - UAH 26,000, +4%;
• "Construction, architecture - UAH 28,500, +4%;
• "Hotel and restaurant business, tourism - UAH 22,100, +3%.

The ranking of positions with the highest salaries (except for executives, IT professionals, and specialists for the Defense Forces) includes: media buyer (UAH 67,500), international driver (UAH 55,000), endodontist (UAH 51,900), straightener, realtor, dentist, motorist (UAH 50,000), business analyst, product manager (UAH 45,000).

However, the lowest incomes are for librarians (UAH 9,500), labelers (UAH 11,000), teacher-organizers (UAH 11,500), cleaners (UAH 12,000), dishwashers (UAH 13,500), and gas station operators (UAH 14,000).

The largest number of vacancies and the lowest competition for vacancies in the Defense Forces

We traditionally share the results of the work.ua/zsu/ section:

1. For 14 months in a row, the number of vacancies from the Defense Forces has been growing. In January, there were 8,147 of them (+7% compared to December).
2. The number of units increased to 782 after a slight drop in December.
3. Most vacancies from the Defense Forces are posted in the categories of "Security, Safety," "Transport, Auto Business," "Telecommunications and Communications," "Medicine, Pharmaceuticals," and "Working Specialties, Production."
4. The number of responses to Defense Forces vacancies decreased by 1%. Combined with the increase in the number of vacancies, this led to a drop in the average number of responses per vacancy per month. In January, this figure was the lowest for the entire period of work.ua/zsu/ section operation.
5. In January, 43% of responses to Defense Forces vacancies were sent by women, 57% by men. The share of women has increased.

Yevheniia Kuzenkova, editor at Work.ua