Labor market collapses long before Maidan events, says expert
The decline of the labor market in Ukraine resulted in civil unrest on the Maidan Square at the end of 2013 and early 2014, the director for development of the Work.ua job search Web site Serhiy Marchenko said at a press conference on Tuesday.
"There is an opinion that the labor market collapsed after the Maidan events. The labor market collapsed not after the Maidan events, but last year. 2013 was the time of Yanukovych's governing, the time of so-called 'stability.' However, in April we saw a fall in the number vacancies by 800, and in summer 2013 we registered a decline by 3,000 vacancies," Marchenko said.
During the whole 2013 along with the decline in the number of vacancies, the number of people looking for job stably grew by 20-30% every month compared to the statistics of 2012.
In addition, the expert said that the labor market in Donetsk region started considerably falling starting from April 2014. In the first week of September 103 vacancies were submitted from Donetsk region, which are 1,034 vacancies less than year-over-year.
In Luhansk region the labor market plunged by 25 times, and in the first week of September only 10 vacancies were placed.
However, Marchenko said that the announced ceasefire influenced positively on this market segment and the number of vacancies from Donetsk and Luhansk regions started gradually growing.
The expert said that compared to October 2014 the number of vacancies on the Web site fell by 8,000-9,000 and at present there are around 40,000 vacancies. The number of resumes grew by 25% on average, to 1.3 applicants.
"Summing up, I'd like to say that the labor market in 2014 fell by 20-25% compared to 2013. Of course, this is the decline, but this is not the decline of 2009. However, I do not rule out that by the end of the year it could worsen," he said.
According to the statistics of the web site, the vacancies from the area of sales and purchase are most popular, and their share is 50% of all vacancies. Average salaries at the moment amount to UAH 4,450 and for resumes – UAH 4,822.
The Work.ua job search Web site was created in 2006 in Dnipropetrovsk, where the head office of the company is located now. The founders and owners of the Web site are Ukrainian citizens Artur Mikhno and Andriy Borovyk. The number of unique visitors of the Web site is around 2.5 million people a month.
