An abnormal situation has arisen on the labor market in Ukraine: "there are no people"

The labor market in Ukraine has a record number of vacancies. At the same time, the number of resumes has decreased. As a result, employers have to compete for each new employee, and there are no new people in some industries.

This is described in the material of OBOZ.UA. Rising prices, corruption, and power outages are less of a concern for employers than staff shortages, according to a survey of businesses conducted by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER). The most important problem is still the danger (56% of respondents mentioned this factor). At the same time, 49% of business representatives mentioned the shortage of personnel as one of the biggest problems hindering growth. Rising prices are a concern for 46% of respondents, and power outages – for 41%.

"We see a downward trend in the number of employees (according to statistics – Ed.). Although most companies (84.5%) do not plan to reduce the number of employees," said Oksana Kuziakiv, Executive Director of the IER, during the presentation of the study.

A particular problem is the search for qualified personnel. Only 1.7% of respondents believe that it has become easier to find a qualified employee. In the next three months, the surveyed managers expect further, albeit insignificant, acceleration of the rate of reduction in the number of employees. The share of managers who said that it was becoming harder to find qualified employees increased from 38.9% to 43.0%. The share of those who say that it is harder to find unskilled workers has also increased, from 31.7% to 36.6%.

According to business estimates, the staff shortage reached a significant scale in December 2023. Back in August-December 2022, less than 20% of surveyed businesses believed that the lack of labor was a significant obstacle to their growth. Now this figure has more than doubled.

The labor market has a record number of vacancies. In May, employers posted 113,016 job offers on Work.ua, which is 2% more than in April. The average competition among job seekers for a vacancy in May was the lowest since January 2021. As of June 1, 2021, 95.5 thousand active resumes and 26.2 thousand active vacancies were posted on Robota.ua. That is, on average, there were 36 applicants for 10 vacancies.

As of June 3, 2024, 27.8 thousand new vacancies were posted and only 52.6 thousand new resumes. That is, there were less than 19 applicants for 10 vacancies. However, in reality, employers often post vacancies that involve the employment of several employees at once. At the same time, Ukrainians update their resumes on HR portals, often having a job and considering the best offers.

Anna Dunina, the owner of a chain of restaurants in Kyiv, described the situation on the labor market as follows: "There are no people. That's it. Small and medium-sized businesses are at great risk of not being able to meet the new challenge. It's not even clear what a super-creative idea should be when you can't influence the real absence of employees."

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