Double-sided analysis of the labor market in Ukraine: graduates’ and employers’ view

Abstract

The current state of the labor market in Ukraine is researched. A lot of processes are irregular and uncontrollable as a result of shadow or informal employment at the market nowadays. Different structural and cyclical influences caused high unemployment and a gap between labor market needs and labor force qualification and education. The impact of the political crisis on employment has been related to a large and growing internal flow of people leaving the areas of warfare and looking for new jobs. The migration of the working age population to other countries has accelerated over the last years. Thus it is important to increase the economic activity of young people by reduction of imbalance between supply and demand for labor, reduction of shadow employment, labor migration of young people. The problems and difficulties for university graduates in the job search and difficulties for employers related to hiring educated young people in the conditions of considerable supply of labor in the Ukrainian labor market are analyzed. The gaps of labor demand and supply are considered from two directions: graduates’ view – challenge of finding jobs for young people; employer’s view – complexity of the employee selection with a high employment potential and an adequate psychological portrait. The measures for preventing and solving the mentioned problems are proposed, among them innovative ways of interviewing and an algorithm for employers for finding highly skilled workers. It is stressed that the problems of employment in Ukraine can not be addressed in isolation from the global processes on the world labor market. The Association between Ukraine and the EU may have a significantl influence, increasing the number of migrant workers and mobility.