War-Driven Interregional Transformations of the Ukrainian Labor Market

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to reveal the modern transformations of the labor market in the Ukraine’s regions under the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The subject of the study is transformational shifts in the regional labor markets of Ukraine caused by the ongoing war. The research was conducted using comparison of two labor supply structures in the Ukraine’s regions based on the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and the uneven distribution coefficient. The gender structure of the labor supply, as well as the structure of labor supply in terms of urban and rural unemployed populations, was analyzed using the JR criterion for assessing the significance of differences between those two structures. It was found that there have been significant structural shifts in the regional labor supply structure, primarily due to alterations in the indicators of frontline communities and in the capital city with Kyiv region, which have experienced a substantial influx of internally displaced persons. A comparative analysis using the coefficient of inequality distribution revealed a growing asymmetry in unemployment rates between 2014 and 2023, driven by population displacement. Gender analysis of the labor supply indicated a high degree of similarity across two-thirds of the regions. There was no stark contrast between the datasets. An assessment of the labor supply structure disaggregated by urban and rural unemployment showed a growing disproportionality in the labor supply structure based on these parameters. The changes in the regional structure of labor demand, caused by military actions, have been revealed. DOI: https://doi.org/10.53486/cike2024.18; UDC: 331.52:355.018(477); JEL Classification: D81, J21, J23, O15, R23.