Ukraine's labor market faces supply-demand imbalance

In the first eight months of 2026, employers offered Ukrainians almost 315 thousand vacancies through the State Employment Service. Over the same period, 484 thousand people used the service's job search assistance.

The State Employment Service reported this.

Thus, the number of registered job seekers significantly exceeded the number of jobs offered by employers. At the same time, the service notes that the labor market problem lies not only in the quantity of vacancies: employers and job seekers often do not match in terms of professions, qualifications, and job requirements.

Among employment service clients, the largest age group was people over 55 years old—over eight months, there were 107 thousand such job seekers. The average job search duration was 42 days. This figure does not include time spent in vocational training.

Employers offered the most jobs in trade and services—almost 59 thousand vacancies. The fewest offers were for skilled workers in agriculture and forestry, fish farming, and fishing—about 7.9 thousand.

In total, from January to August, employers announced vacancies for almost 4 thousand different professions through the employment service.

Among the most in-demand workers were unskilled laborers, motor vehicle drivers, food salespeople, cooks, accountants, and civil service specialists. Employers also actively sought security guards, nurses, general education teachers, seamstresses, administrators, and watchmen.

Some professions, on the contrary, appeared only sporadically in employers' offers. They include geneticists, soil scientists, international lawyers, historians, sociologists, fashion designers, polygraph examiners, insurers, and disc jockeys.

Employment service data reflect only the segment of the market that goes through the state employment system. The Unified Vacancy Portal, which aggregates offers from various sources, shows a significantly larger number of available jobs.

Previously, the service reported that in the first half of 2026 alone, employers offered more than 240 thousand vacancies through its services, of which 131.5 thousand were filled. The agency cited the main obstacle to employment as the mismatch between job seekers' skills and expectations and employers' actual needs.