Over 3 million Ukrainians can be returned to the labor market – Ministry of Social Policy

A large number of people currently receiving social benefits indicates problems in the labor market. Up to 3-3.5 million Ukrainians, including people with disabilities, internally displaced persons, women caring for relatives, and people aged 55+, can be engaged in work. To do this, it is necessary to create a system that will help people not lose touch with economic life and not be left alone with their problems. The main goal is not to write off a person from life, but to support their return to full activity. Daryna Marchak, Deputy Minister of Social Policy of Ukraine, said this during the presentation of the Strategy for the Development of Economic Capacity of the Population of Ukraine, as reported by a correspondent of UNN.

Details

Roughly speaking, for me, as a representative of the Ministry of Social Policy, a large cohort of people who are our clients, beneficiaries of social benefits, is a consequence of the imperfection of the labor market. The better our labor market works, the more balanced and inclusive the labor market is, the less work we, as the Ministry of Social Policy, will have. I hope that someday we will have much less work

One of the main excluded groups, according to Marchak, is people with disabilities, especially veterans. Only 16% of such citizens are employed, which is significantly lower than international standards.

I think everyone knows the statistics. Before the full-scale invasion, 16% of people with disabilities were employed. These are people with disabilities of working age. While the international benchmark is approximately a minimum of 50%. There are countries where the employment rate of people with disabilities is 60-70 and more percent. We have 16. Moreover, most of these people with disabilities are actually third-group disabilities, which is so-called working

With the war, the structure of people with disabilities has changed – it is no longer just elderly people. As Marchak emphasized, today there are many young people under 45 among such people.

Almost a million IDPs are unemployed

We have 900,000 internally displaced persons of working age who are unemployed. These are official data from the register of insured persons. These people are not pensioners, do not receive pensions, are not people with disabilities

She also added that only 27% of Ukrainians aged 55 to 65 are employed.

Because very often in our country, a person of older age begins to be called a person already 50+. And just now we were at a study that shows that only 27% of people aged 55 and older are employed. From 55 to 65. Less than a third of people who are absolutely still potentially healthy, could be active participants in the labor market, but for various reasons are not participants in the labor market

Also, according to her estimates, a large group consists of women who care for a child or for relatives with disabilities.

According to our estimates, at least 3-3.5 million can be activated into the labor market. This is close to the figure that, theoretically, our labor market needs today

Labor Market Inclusivity

We see many examples of non-inclusive policies. Age restrictions, gender restrictions, restrictions on workplace requirements. For example, when a person could work part of the day remotely, without compromising the quality of work, but for some reason there is a requirement from nine to six. And this, for example, can be a very significant limitation for women who care for children

She added that even progressive companies sometimes have a lot of restrictions. Therefore, the first thing to do is to “systematically work on HR policies in order to, well, not with words, calls, do, become more inclusive.”

Continuous support

The key, in our opinion, is to ensure an effective combination of efforts of all authorities at the state and local levels in order to accompany a person and, through all available tools, return the person to the same labor market, to economic and social capacity

She added that the Ministry of Economy, Veterans, and Social Policy have a large number of programs aimed at returning people to self-sufficiency. But there is a significant “sag” in the fact that there is no system of holistic support, when “no matter which window a person enters the system of state support, the National Police, the education system, a veteran’s assistant, a social worker, the healthcare sector, we would simultaneously activate all tools.”

Therefore, the key thing we are currently working on, in addition to developing individual tools, is building an electronic case management system that should work as an entry system

We have already developed such a system for people with disabilities. We just need to pass the bill and launch it. If we launch it, it will be from July 1, 2026. Now we are starting to work to launch the same system for internally displaced persons. And by and large, the key thing we need to do is that if a person encounters a state need, they will not run after state bodies, but state bodies will automatically get involved and provide a set of tools that this particular person will need to return to normal life. This is our task

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