The most attractive hire in Ukraine right now is a man over 60. Not because employers suddenly discovered the value of experience, but because a 60-year-old won’t be mobilized within the month.
Ella Libanova, director of the Ptuha Institute of Demography and Social Studies and one of Ukraine’s leading demographers, told RBC-Ukraine that a “silver age of the economy” has begun. It isn’t a moral conversion. It’s triage: employers are widening the age bracket because the usual labour pool is gone—and because mobilisation risk now sits inside the hiring calculus.
The age threshold is making older workers employable again, and quietly tagging them as the workforce of last resort.
Employers who a decade ago wouldn’t consider applicants over 50 are now chasing them. In agriculture, industry, construction, and transport, workers over 55 have become indispensable—not by choice, but by elimination. The age threshold is doing two things at once: making older workers employable again, and quietly tagging them as the workforce of last resort.
A landmark study published this month by researchers from Bocconi University and the National Bank of Ukraine confirms what Ukrainian businesses already know: the country’s labor market survived one of the largest workforce shocks in modern history, but is now hitting a ceiling that money cannot raise.
Every major forecaster agrees GDP growth is capped at around 2%—not by a lack of capital or demand, but by a lack of people.
Every major forecaster agrees GDP growth is capped at around 2%—not by a lack of capital or demand, but by a lack of people. For European policymakers modeling what happens when demographic decline meets prolonged conflict, Ukraine is no longer a hypothetical. It is a case study unfolding in real time.
The hole
Ukraine’s workforce has shrunk by a quarter since 2021. Around 10 million people have left the country, been killed, or live under Russian occupation. The fertility rate has collapsed to 0.7 children per woman—among the lowest ever recorded anywhere.
Deaths outpace births three to one. The birth rate has halved in a decade: from 32,000 per month in 2016 to 14,000 in 2025. Libanova told CNN the situation is “a catastrophe,” adding: “No country can exist without people.”
Every month the war continues deepens a demographic hole that no peace deal can fill.
With an average soldier age of 43, most front-line casualties are married fathers, leaving behind a growing population of widows, orphans, and 59,000 children without biological parents. Every month the war continues deepens a demographic hole that no peace deal can fill.
Russia faces its own demographic crisis—it has lost over 1% of all men in the country to the war—but its population base is nearly four times Ukraine’s, making the asymmetry acute.
The ceiling
Employers offered vacancies through the State Employment Service nearly 450,000 times in 2025. Only 63.3% were filled. A November 2025 European Business Association survey found 83% of Ukrainian companies short-staffed, with 74% calling it serious.
Businesses can’t find workers and are scaling back.
The defense industry—Ukraine’s fastest-growing sector, with output rising from $1 billion in 2022 to roughly $12 billion in 2025—lists personnel as its primary bottleneck. Companies that have doubled their staff since 2022 still can’t find enough welders, machinists, and engineers.
Services inflation is easing—but not because the economy is stabilizing. Businesses can’t find workers and are scaling back. Reduced activity means less wage competition, which means less price pressure. The economy is contracting to fit the workforce it has.
Surprisingly resilient—to a point
The Bocconi-NBU study, forthcoming in the journal Economic Policy, offers the first systematic analysis of how a modern labor market functions during a large-scale war. Out-migration alone removed roughly 3 million workers; at least 700,000 were mobilized; tens of thousands more were killed or wounded. The authors call it “one of the largest combined labor supply and reallocation shocks in recent history.”
Yet the efficiency of matching—how often job seekers and employers actually connect—declined only about 15%. That is less than what the US experienced during the 2008 financial crisis. Unemployment spiked above 20% in 2022, then settled at 11.5% by 2025. Real wages surpassed pre-war levels by 2024.
Several mechanisms helped. Women moved into traditionally male roles, from mining to truck driving—and now register 61% of new businesses, up from 49% before the invasion. Remote work allowed displaced Ukrainians—including some abroad—to keep working for Ukrainian employers. Wage flexibility narrowed the gap between what companies offered and what workers demanded.
Ageism hasn’t ended. It has changed form.
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And older workers filled a critical gap. Libanova’s research, part of a new study called “Silver Economy of Ukraine: The Potential of the 55+ Generation,” shows the shift goes beyond manual labor. In back offices, kitchens, and operational roles, workers over 55 are keeping entire sectors running.
Only customer-facing positions—retail floors, restaurants, call centers—still skew young. Ageism hasn’t ended, Libanova told RBC-Ukraine. It has changed form: from exclusion to hierarchical inclusion—hired, but kept away from prestige, pay, and promotion.
Just 6% of the nearly 5 million Ukrainians who fled abroad as refugees are over 65—the older generation disproportionately stayed, and Libanova calls them a “mental anchor”: less mobile, more rooted, and the reason younger Ukrainians might eventually come back.
Retraining, importing, improvising
The third national labor market assessment, presented in December 2025 by the State Employment Service together with Switzerland’s Helvetas and the Federation of Employers of Ukraine, surveyed 61,000 enterprises employing 4.4 million people. It found 67% of companies continued hiring in 2025, with manufacturing, trade, healthcare, and agriculture leading demand.
The Employment Service placed 315,000 people in jobs and retrained nearly 90,000 workers last year. But the hardest gaps require years, not months: economist Oleh Penzin told RFE/RL the shortage of technical workers is “catastrophic”—Ukraine is overflowing with economists and lawyers while desperate for drivers, welders, and boiler operators.
Some companies aren’t waiting for retraining to close the gap. A furniture manufacturer in Zakarpattia Oblast, on the border with Romania, hired workers from Bangladesh because it couldn’t find Ukrainians. Logistics centers are reportedly considering workers from India and Pakistan.
In the first nine months of 2025, only 2,384 immigration permit applications were reviewed—about the same volume that two months generated before the war.
The numbers behind that shift are politically charged. Back in mid-2024, then-Deputy Economy Minister Tetiana Berezhna estimated Ukraine would need 4.5 million additional workers over the next decade to hit 7% annual GDP growth. Former Economy Minister Tymofii Mylovanov went further, telling Ukrainska Pravda the country may eventually need up to 10 million migrants.
For a country that has spent four years losing people, those numbers are explosive—and for now, far outpace reality. A VoxUkraine analysis found that in the first nine months of 2025, only 2,384 immigration permit applications were reviewed—about the same volume that two months generated before the war.
What can’t be replaced
A pension reform launched in mid-2025 is attempting to replace the old solidarity model with a three-tier system. The government is still preparing the draft law and public hearings, and business-side summaries now describe the accumulative component as a 2027 start rather than an implemented 2026 launch.
The reform addresses a symptom. The cause runs deeper. A fertility rate of 0.7 means fewer workers, fewer taxpayers, and fewer soldiers in every future decade. Libanova believes the most qualified emigrants may return first—they had status at home, and abroad, unless they are Nobel laureates, they remain “people of the second sort,” as she put it.
Ukraine’s labor market adapted with surprising speed under extreme stress.
The Bocconi-NBU researchers recommend maintaining high participation among women, older workers, and people with disabilities, while using remote work as a bridge to eventually bring refugees home.
Ukraine’s labor market adapted with surprising speed under extreme stress. Silver-haired workers, women stepping into gaps, wage flexibility, remote work—all kept the economy from breaking. But the ceiling is people. And the people are running out.
