Entry-level employers are finding it harder—and more expensive—to recruit young men. On Work.ua, one of Ukraine’s largest job platforms, the number of male candidates aged 18 to 22 who responded to vacancies fell 19% between July 2025 and July 2026, Lesia Prymakova told Ukrainska Pravda. The decline reached 29% in hospitality and retail.

At the same time, advertised entry-level pay moved close to Work.ua’s overall median. The median salary for vacancies open to students rose 24%, while pay for jobs requiring no experience increased 23%.

The candidate pool shrank after the government eased wartime travel restrictions for men aged 18 to 22 last summer, following an initiative by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The government said the change was intended to discourage families from taking boys abroad before their 18th birthdays, when the previous rules would have prevented them from leaving.

Hospitality and retail feel the squeeze

Restaurant owners tied the decline in young applicants directly to the eased travel rules. Sommelier Oleh Kravchenko, who owns Kyiv wine bar Win Bar, said two of his staff, a bartender and a cook, were preparing to leave the country, and that the bar had begun hiring more women, whereas server positions had earlier been held only by men.

He said his payroll had risen 5 to 10% and that he now raised wages at least every six months, even as rent, utilities, and food costs also climbed. Olena Borysova, who owns the GastroFamily group behind the Bilyi Naliv chain, said young applicants had become rare over the past year.

Ukraine’s labor shortage extends far beyond this age group. Ukraine’s full-time workforce fell from 7 million in 2021 to 5.3 million by late 2025, while the National Bank expects the net outflow of workers to continue into 2027.

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Against that backdrop, 48% of companies reported labor shortages in a survey cited by Ukrainska Pravda, without attributing them specifically to the travel change, and Work.ua put the overall median advertised wage up 20% year on year. These are nominal advertised salaries; annual inflation stood at 7.7% in July, so the real increase is smaller.

No one knows how many stayed abroad

No reliable count shows how many young men remained abroad. Social Policy Minister Denys Uliutin cited an estimate from European partners that some 400,000 men aged 18 to 22 left Ukraine between August 2025 and April 2026. However, the estimate does not identify unique individuals or subtract those who later returned, Vasyl Voskoboinyk, head of the NGO Office of Migration Policy, told Ukrainska Pravda.

Voskoboinyk estimated that around 300,000 men in this age group had been working, equivalent to about 2% of Ukraine’s labor force, and said their departures had not caused a broader labor-market collapse.

Available education data show no comparable decline. The Education Ministry recorded a 28% year-on-year rise in university applications, while Kyiv-Mohyla rector Serhiy Kvit said the academy had not seen mass withdrawals. Applications count submissions rather than enrolled or retained students, so the increase indicates continued demand for places rather than a settled outcome.

Voskoboinyk said it was still too early to determine whether the policy had reduced departures among 16- and 17-year-old boys, its stated long-term aim.

Employers widen who they recruit

Employers are recruiting more broadly to fill the gap. Olena Kolesnikova of the Federation of Employers said firms were increasingly willing to hire from groups they had previously overlooked, with 94.4% open to internally displaced people, 91% to veterans, and 88% to people with disabilities.

Keeping young people in Ukraine, she argued, would take more than pay. "The right question is not how to keep young people from leaving, but how to make it worthwhile for a young person to start a career and build a life in Ukraine after they finish studying," she said.

Ukraine’s wartime business optimism has split in two. In July, the construction sector, funded by state money for roads and damaged infrastructure, remained the country’s most confident, even as service firms slid into outright pessimism, and overall confidence in the economy stopped improving.

The divide is about money. Rebuilding, paid for by the government and its foreign backers, is thriving. The businesses that earn their own keep—transport, hospitality, professional and financial firms—are squeezed by rising costs and a shortage of skilled workers.

Each month, the National Bank of Ukraine asks companies whether they expect business to improve or worsen. In July, there was only barely more expected improvement than decline: a reading of 50.1, where 50 is the dividing line, down from 50.4 in June.

A year earlier, more firms were gloomy than hopeful. As 2025 closed, the divide ran along a different line: retail firms stayed confident while industry shrank under Russian strikes, and the overall mood was still a shade negative.

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Where the rebuilding money goes, confidence follows

Construction was far above the line, at 54.2, lifted by financing for road repair and rebuilding—even as the same survey listed intensifying strikes on critical infrastructure among the factors holding activity back.

Industry and trade stayed barely positive. Services alone fell below the line, into pessimism, squeezed by higher costs and too few skilled workers. Only builders expect to hire; industry and services plan to cut.

For Ukraine’s partners, the survey shows where rebuilding money actually reaches. That spending—part-funded by Western aid, which the bank lists as one reason confidence holds up at all—is a preview of the demand that a full postwar rebuild would bring.

In June 2026, Russian strikes on that same industrial base pushed Ukraine into its sharpest wartime contraction since 2023.

The next survey, covering August, is due on the first working day of September.