MAKIV, Ukraine –- Desertions, draft dodging, and a minimum conscription age of 25 have contributed to a manpower problem that hampers Ukraine’s defense against a full-scale Russian invasion that will hit the four-year mark in February if peace is not achieved.
But Kyiv’s need to get people to the front is also creating a manpower problem nationwide, with labor shortages hitting many industries and some towns virtually empty of conscription-age men.
It’s a phenomenon fueled by both conscription and flight, as millions of Ukrainians have left the country. Some of them are men of conscription age who have gotten out despite what is now a bar on most men aged 23-60 from leaving Ukraine.
“The shortage of people with technical skills and education is catastrophic,” Oleh Penzin, a Ukrainian economist, told RFE/RL.
According to the State Employment Center, the sharpest labor shortages are seen in education, ground transport, metal-product manufacturing, furniture production, and energy supply industries.
Strategic enterprises such as defense industry companies and railways remain largely exempt from conscription, but businesses across Ukraine are struggling, political analyst Kostyantyn Batozskiy said.
“Your employee can be drafted at any time, and that’s a problem,” he told RFE/RL.
'No Man To Dig A Grave For The Dead'
In Makiv, a small town in the Khmelnytskiy region in western Ukraine, draft-age men are a rare sight. Most have been drafted or left the country, and those who remain keep a low profile to avoid mobilization, sometimes carried out by groups of recruitment officers, police, or military personnel that apprehend men on the street and bring them in for service.
“Guys who work at a computer can work in their apartment. But laborers…go out to work, trying to earn money for their families -- and they are rounded up like cattle,” Kateryna, a Makiv resident who gave only her first name, told Current Time.
There’s “no man to dig a grave for the dead,” Kateryna said. She said she learned to use a chainsaw and other tools she had never used in the past in order to get along day-to-day.
Conscription has made it difficult to fill jobs traditionally held by men, according to the State Employment Center, and agriculture is among the sectors that have been hit.
“With increased mobilization, tractor drivers and machinists have changed their professions to military ones,” said Oleh Khomenko, director of the Ukrainian Agrarian Business Club. “We’re now facing a shortage of qualified personnel of up to 15 percent.”
Millions Have Left. Will They Return?
Some farmers are hoping to recruit teenagers, who are well below conscription age, for seasonal work –- a practice that goes back to the Soviet era.
“I used to take part myself --- it was called an internship, but it was really work,” Khomenko said.
While many men and some women are serving in the army, around 6-7 million Ukrainians have left the country since Russia launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to the International Labor Organization, about 1.6 million adults of working age have left Ukraine, the majority of them women.
“If we manage to bring back at least 40 percent of them, that would be a huge help for the economy,” Penzin told RFE/RL, referring to men and women.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke of the labor problem in August 2024. “We cannot afford to lose our army and its reserves, but we also very much need workers for our jobs,” he said. “We must find balance.”
The government and businesses have been scrambling for solutions.
In European countries with large Ukrainian communities, Ukraine has been setting up Unity Hubs to provide support and advice both for Ukrainians integrating abroad and for those considering voluntary return when it becomes possible.
“This is a new project, and there isn’t much to say yet,” Batozskiy told RFE/RL.
Danylo, a 17-year-old refugee who lives in Germany and gave only his first name, said he has no plans to return to Ukraine.
“If I go back to my hometown, I’ll have to start from scratch,” he told RFE/RL. “I literally have nothing there.”
Foreign Workers
Back home, some Ukrainian businesses are bringing in foreign workers or considering doing so.
In March, Lamella, a furniture manufacturer in Tyachiv, on the Romanian border in the western Transcarpathia region, far from the front lines, hired workers from Bangladesh.
“We have many women -- about 60 percent -- working on small-part machines, but there are positions that require male strength,” Yaroslav Shcherban, Lamella’s commercial director, told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.
Former Economy Minister Tymofiy Mylovanov told the news outlet Ukrayinska Pravda that Ukraine could need up to 10 million migrants to bring positive changes to the Ukrainian economy. In his opinion, they will be mostly blue-collar professionals.
Batozskiy believes it’s too early to make such an estimate. “We need to survive the war first and then assess what we need,” he said.
Penzin also said peace may be the only thing that will really rectify the situation.
“The first thing needed to fix the labor shortage is to end the war, then everything will be sorted with time,” he said.
