Ukrainian labor market: historical challenges and new tasks

The article deals with the peculiarities inherent in the Ukrainian labour market and conditioned by historical retrospective. The formation of market relations in the area of labour was at the crossroads of social and political establishment during the structural changes in the economy, which determined the formation of the special characteristics of the Ukrainian labor market model. Modern employment structure lost signs of industrialization, and it does not acquire signs of innovation.

It is characterized by inefficiency, as the retention of obsolete technological base of a large part of domestic enterprises; the predominance in retrospect, the commodity component of economic growth; weak responsiveness of vocational and qualification structure of the labour market to structural change; the discrepancy between the qualification structure of the personnel needs and employers to ensure these technological changes; low level of mobility of the population and employees; low and uncompetitive salaries, the existence of working poor, which discourages meaningful employment. The employment structure is determined not only by economic determinants, but also by the uncertainty of the integration aspirations. Low efficiency and poor management produced in the professional-qualification employment structure, which demonstrates that even in a period of economic growth, employers preferred workers with low skills as their share in the employment structure is the greatest.

The presence of the phenomenon both over- and scarce labor, increasing the share of the unemployment structural component, on the one hand, stimulates labor migration, and on the other hand, employment not in their specialties. The specificity of the labor market model in Ukraine increases the risks of social and economic degradation and forms of the latest challenges for the state social policy. An effective response to that should be reforms to reduce structural imbalances in employment, remuneration, formation of new professional competences of the employees and also providing effective professional and territorial mobility of labour while increasing the jobs quality.