Applications fall despite rising military pay as Ukraine’s demographic crisis bites (INFOGRAPHIC)

The Armed Forces of Ukraine advertised nearly three times as many positions in November 2025 as they had a year earlier, but fewer people applied.

The military posted 5,861 vacancies in November—a 238% increase from November 2024—according to data from OLX Robota, one of Ukraine’s largest job platforms. Applications fell 6.2%, Finance.ua reported on 6 January. The median salary barely moved: 70,500 UAH (~$1,700) versus 70,300 UAH a year ago.

The numbers matter beyond Ukraine’s borders. Western allies, counting on Ukrainian military capacity to hold the line against Russia, are watching that capacity strain under the same demographic crisis blocking the civilian economy. Ukraine can secure financing. It cannot secure workers.

The salary structure

Military pay appears generous—2.6 times the national average of 26,913 UAH ($636) median. But the headline figure obscures a harsher reality.

The high median reflects combat zone bonuses: 30,000 UAH ($709) for frontline presence, 70,000 UAH ($ 1,655) for mission zones, and up to 100,000 UAH ($ 2,364) for active combat, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.

Base pay for rear positions—around 22,000 UAH ($520) in late 2025—was “comparable to that of a warehouse worker or cashier” and “one factor deterring civilians from enlisting,” Kyiv Post reported in November.

That’s less than a Nova Poshta postal operator earns (25,000-30,000 UAH, or around $590-$710) and comparable to warehouse work at MAUDAU, a major Ukrainian e-commerce retailer (25,000-50,000 UAH, or $590-$ 1,180). Once soldiers rotate to the rear, they lose combat bonuses and revert to the base rate.

The demographic ceiling

The military is competing in a labor market that’s already broken. Ukraine’s State Employment Service received 427,000 job requests from employers in the first eleven months of 2025, while only 338,000 people were registered as unemployed. Just 63% of civilian positions were filled.

Some 6-7 million Ukrainians have left the country since February 2022, according to an RFE/RL investigation. The workforce aged 15-70 shrank by over a quarter. Half of Ukrainian companies now report labor shortages blocking their development, according to the National Bank of Ukraine—a figure that has more than doubled since 2023.

“The shortage of people with technical skills and education is catastrophic,” Ukrainian economist Oleh Penzin told RFE/RL.

The military needs exactly those skills. The most-demanded positions, according to OLX data: UAV operators, drivers, combat medics, and riflemen—roles requiring either technical expertise or physical risk tolerance that money alone cannot buy.

Regional patterns

The sharpest increases in military job postings came in Kirovohrad and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, where vacancies grew twelvefold. Chernivtsi, Mykolaiv, and Vinnytsia saw six- to sevenfold increases.

But posting jobs isn’t filling them.

Applications in Kherson Oblast, under near-constant Russian shelling, dropped 78%. Ivano-Frankivsk, despite offering Ukraine’s highest military salaries at 110,500 UAH (~$2,610), saw a 59% decline in applications. Kharkiv recorded a 34% decline.

Chernivtsi, tucked in the Carpathians far from active combat, was the outlier—applications surged 538%.

The government’s response

Ukrainian economy can grow no faster than 2% in 2026, forecasters agree, because the country has secured financing but cannot find workers. The military faces the same constraint with higher stakes.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in November that new contracts will raise base pay to 50,000-60,000 UAH (~$1,180-1,420)—nearly triple current levels—with fixed service terms of one to five years and guaranteed leave after combat rotations.

Whether that closes the gap remains uncertain. Money can prevent economic collapse. It cannot buy back the millions who left—or convince those who remain that any salary compensates for the risk of combat.