Business

In January, the number of vacancies on the labor market increased: who are employers looking for?

the year 2025 started dynamically for the Ukrainian labor market: the number of vacancies increased by 7%. The most noticeable increase was for beauty professionals. But despite the shortage of staff, employers remain demanding of candidates: in January, the number of vacancies requiring work experience increased by 10%. This is stated in a labor market survey conducted by the Work.ua platform, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.

Experts also point out another important trend: the number of job offers where the company prefers veterans has increased by 17%. In January, there were already 3,742 such vacancies.

What are the wishes of job seekers?

It is a tradition in the labor market to start the year with a job search. So, in January, Work.ua recorded an extraordinary activity of candidates – perhaps the highest since the beginning of 2023, when the period of staff shortage began. As a result, almost 1.5 million responses to vacancies were recorded in January. This is 39% more than in December.

Every month, portal experts state that competition for remote work is 5 times higher than the market average. 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 a layout designer and Front-end Developer, now the leaders are a direct manager and a chat specialist. These are professions that involve processing incoming customer requests, usually on social media.

Instead, the lowest competition was 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 has increased by several percentage points in the labor market.

What do employers offer?

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 there has been 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 grew unevenly in January:

Kyiv – 31,489 vacancies, plus 4% compared to December;

Lviv – 8,320, plus 10%;

Dnipropetrovska – 8,126, plus 2%;

Odesa – 5,323, plus 10%;

Kharkiv – 2,949, plus 13%.

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

“Working specialties, production” – 15,932 vacancies, plus 5% compared to December;

“Service sector” – 13,927, plus 6%;

“Sales, purchasing” – 11,888, plus 11%.

Compared to the previous month, the number of vacancies in the Beauty, Fitness, and Sports category 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 (plus 62% compared to December, 261 vacancies)

– laser hair removal specialist (+ 38%, 207);

– hairdresser (plus 32%, 358);

– manicurist (plus 28%, 455).

What salary can be expected

According to Work.ua, perhaps the only important indicator that did not change in January 2025 is salary. The median remained at UAH 24,000. But in some regions and industries, there was still a noticeable shift. In particular, average salaries increased in Kyiv (UAH 26,000, plus UAH 750 by December) and Kharkiv (UAH 21,000, plus UAH 1,000) regions.

Also, the offered incomes in the categories have increased:

“Top management, senior management” – UAH 47,500, plus 6%;

“Beauty, fitness, sports – UAH 25,000, plus 4%;

“Insurance – UAH 26,000, plus 4%;

“Construction, architecture – UAH 28,500, plus 4%;

“Hotel and restaurant business, tourism – UAH 22,100, plus 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

Traditionally, Work.ua summarizes the results of the work of the section work.ua/zsu/:

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 (plus 7% compared to December).

The number of units increased to 782 after a slight drop in December.

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.”

The number of responses to Defense Forces vacancies decreased by 1%. Combined with an 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.

In January, 43% of responses to Defense Forces vacancies were sent by women, 57% by men. The share of women has increased.

General trends and imbalances in the labor market

Demand for labor remained high in early 2025, and the shortage of workers limited the ability to increase production and affected the growth of production costs. As a result, the burden per vacancy was even lower than in 2021, which contributed to a decline in unemployment over the past year. This is stated in the NBU’s January 2025 Inflation Report.

However, the reduction in the unemployment rate is constrained by its significant structural component, which is due to significant imbalances between the needs of employers and the knowledge and skills of potential employees. There is also a significant regional disparity in unemployment rates. This is due, in part, to the effects of the war: according to the NBU, unemployment is higher in regions close to the war zone.

The shortage of staff stimulated further wage growth, which, according to the NBU, continued until the end of 2024, but gradually slowed. In the fourth quarter, real wage growth slowed to single digits due to both rising inflation and a smaller labor shortage, which remains significantly higher than before the full-scale invasion. However, as early as the third quarter of 2024, real wages exceeded prewar levels in most economic activities.

As labor demand grows, the NBU expects unemployment to gradually decline, but still remain higher than before the full-scale invasion.