The Ukrainian labor market today exists in two realities at once. In one, businesses have been talking for years about a shortage of workers, the difficulty of filling job openings, and the need to literally compete for employees. In the other, a young person fresh out of college can spend months sending out resumes and receiving rejections due to a lack of experience.
This paradox seems particularly strange in the context of war. Millions of Ukrainians have left the country, hundreds of thousands are serving in the Armed Forces, the population is aging, and employers are having to actively recruit women, older workers, veterans, students, and candidates whom they might not have even considered just a few years ago.
However, a labor shortage does not automatically mean a shortage of any type of worker. Businesses often need someone who can deliver results almost immediately. That is precisely why, even alongside terms like “Junior,” “Trainee,” or “entry-level position,” you might see requirements for practical experience, a portfolio, English proficiency, proficiency in professional software, and—already today—the ability to use artificial intelligence.
And this isn’t just a Ukrainian problem. The International Labor Organization estimates global youth unemployment at approximately 12.4% in 2026, and about 20% of young people worldwide are neither working nor studying.
AI poses a particular risk: while it isn’t yet replacing entire professions on a massive scale, it is already capable of performing many simple tasks that new hires used to be trained to do.
UA.News explains why, despite a labor shortage, it’s still difficult for young people to land their first job; how the requirements of Ukrainian businesses are changing; and whether we’re currently creating a shortage of experienced specialists who, in a few years, simply won’t be available.
Ukraine is facing both a labor shortage and a record number of entry-level job openings
At first glance, the situation for a young job seeker should be favorable.
Back in 2024, Reuters reported that Ukraine had lost more than a quarter of its pre-war workforce due to the war. Companies began more actively hiring women for professions that were previously considered predominantly male, recruiting students and teenagers, and revising their requirements for candidates.
By 2026, this trend had only intensified. Work.ua cites the unprecedented number of job openings for people with no experience as one of the key features of the current job market. The reason is simple: the labor shortage is forcing employers to lower their entry requirements and, increasingly, to agree to train people after they’ve been hired.
This is an important clarification, as the situation does not look like a mass disappearance of entry-level jobs.
On the contrary, Work.ua’s 2026 analysis specifically examines the prospects for young people without experience, and the platform itself regularly publishes job listings for teenagers and students, where employers are explicitly willing to train candidates from scratch.
The problem runs deeper. First jobs do exist, but they are not always in the profession a young person has chosen.
Ukrainian businesses may be short on drivers, electricians, mechanics, salespeople, and workers in manufacturing, logistics, or construction. But a graduate of a marketing, law, or computer science program cannot automatically fill such a position.
As a result, in the same job market, a company might spend half a year looking for an employee, while a young candidate might spend half a year looking for a company.
Experience Is Needed Even Before the First Job
The main paradox of starting a career today is that, formally, employers are opening up more and more job openings for people without experience, but the very concept of “no experience” is changing.
Work.ua cites a record number of job openings for candidates without prior work experience as one of the trends in the Ukrainian market. The labor shortage is forcing companies to lower their formal requirements and more often agree to train newcomers.
At the same time, in many office and professional fields, candidates are still expected to provide practical evidence that they already know how to do the job: a portfolio, a personal project, an internship, volunteer experience, freelance work, or completed projects.
As a result, a new model for a first job is emerging: a person may not have a single official entry on their resume, but in fact must gain some professional experience before a company agrees to hire them for a full-time position.
A separate infrastructure for this is gradually taking shape in the Ukrainian market. On Work.ua and robota.ua, you can search specifically for internships and job openings for candidates with no experience, and large companies are increasingly launching their own trainee programs and summer internships, as well as collaborating with educational institutions.
As a result, the very model of entering the profession is changing. The traditional path—“get a degree, land your first job, and start gaining experience”—is gradually being supplemented by another step: first, gain at least some practical experience, and only then apply for a full-fledged entry-level position.
For young people, this creates an additional barrier, but at the same time makes internships and hands-on programs significantly more important than before. In fact, they’re shifting from being just another item on a resume to one of the main ways to prove to an employer that a candidate is ready for real-world work.
Who will train the next generation of mid-level and senior professionals?
One of the main risks of reducing entry-level positions is that experienced professionals don’t just appear out of thin air.
For an individual company, it’s often easier to hire a ready-made specialist than to spend several months training a beginner. But on a market-wide scale, this logic has an obvious flaw.
A junior doesn’t just become a ready-made middle-level professional. A person must spend several years performing simpler tasks, making mistakes, working alongside more experienced colleagues, and gradually taking on more complex responsibilities.
If the number of such entry-level positions declines, in a few years the problem will escalate to the next level—employers will begin competing for a limited number of experienced professionals.
For Ukraine, this risk is particularly acute due to demographics, migration, and the war. The KSE Institute already identifies human capital as one of the key constraints on the country’s future economic development.
A first job is not just about the salary
A first job is often seen as a temporary step: the main thing is to get at least something on your resume, and then look for something more serious later.
However, Lana Solntseva, CEO of Talent Partners Consulting & Recruiting Company, cites McDonald’s’ work with young people as an example. According to her, the company is redefining the role of a first job “as a launching pad for development, rather than a temporary option.”
This is an important clarification for the entire market. A first job is needed not only so that a person can start earning money. It is precisely in this role that basic work discipline, communication with the team, accountability for results, and an understanding of how an organization actually works are formed.
In discussions about hiring without experience, only one side is often heard: junior employees need to be trained, they make more mistakes, and they require time from senior colleagues.
HR specialist Oksana Mazur, on the other hand, highlights the advantages of such employees.
“Young people embody energy, ambition, and a thirst for new experiences and achievements,” she says.
According to her observations, young people in their first job can handle a heavy workload, learn quickly, be flexible, and adapt more easily to new technologies.
In other words, a candidate without several years of experience on their resume isn’t necessarily a weaker candidate. They simply have a different set of strengths—and in the face of a labor shortage, businesses will increasingly have to evaluate potential rather than just prior experience.
But AI is changing the very nature of a first job
On top of demographics, war, and migration, another process is unfolding—the rapid spread of generative artificial intelligence. And here, the issue is more complex than the popular notion that “AI will take away jobs.”
The International Labor Organization (ILO) is not yet talking about the mass elimination of professions. It is much more likely that technology will change the range of tasks within professions.
However, the ILO specifically identifies young people as a vulnerable group, since AI may create new barriers precisely at the point of entry into the labor market. In a recent global report on youth employment, the organization explicitly states that AI skills will become increasingly important, while new technologies may complicate the very start of a career.
The reason is simple: AI is particularly good at performing many tasks that were previously assigned to newcomers. Gathering information. Preparing a draft document. Doing a simple translation. Creating a spreadsheet. Writing basic code. Drafting options for advertising copy. Compiling a short report or presentation.
In the past, this wasn’t just cheap labor for a junior specialist. It was a training ground for the profession. A beginner would complete dozens of simple tasks, receive feedback, identify mistakes, and gradually move on to more complex ones.
If part of the first level of work is automated by an algorithm, the question arises: how will people now learn to perform the second and third levels?
Junior with AI vs. Senior with AI
For employers, technology creates yet another temptation. A hypothetical senior programmer with an AI assistant can perform some of the work that was previously delegated to a junior.
A marketer can receive dozens of drafts of ad copy in just a few minutes. A lawyer can quickly structure documents or conduct an initial search. An analyst can process a data set that previously required manual work by a junior employee.
However, the profession itself isn’t disappearing. Companies still need programmers, lawyers, designers, journalists, and marketers. The number of people needed at the entry level of these professions may decrease. That is why the key question for the coming years is not just “how many jobs will AI take away.”
The question is phrased differently: How will people learn to perform complex work if simple tasks are increasingly being done for them by machines?
A college degree is no longer an automatic ticket
Against this backdrop, the traditional role of a university degree is also weakening.
In February 2026, Work.ua surveyed 750 employers about what they actually want to see in candidates’ resumes. This once again demonstrates a shift from formal qualifications to practical suitability for the job.
Education remains important in medicine, engineering, law, and other professions with formal requirements. However, in a significant portion of today’s professions, companies want to see not only what a person has studied but also what they are already capable of doing.
That’s why young people are effectively encouraged to gain experience even before their first full-time job: through internships, personal projects, volunteering, freelancing, and educational case studies. These experiences are increasingly taking the place of the traditional “junior” position.
Ukraine will have to train its own workforce
In a peaceful country, the issue of a first job primarily concerns young people and specific companies. For Ukraine, however, the problem is on a much larger scale.
The country is already facing a severe shortage of human capital. After the war, hundreds of thousands of workers will be needed in construction, energy, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, education, the defense industry, and the technology sector.
At the same time, a portion of young Ukrainians are living abroad, and demographically, the new generations are smaller than the previous ones. In this situation, a model where every employer wants only fully trained specialists simply cannot work indefinitely.
Ukrainian businesses will have to do more than just look for workers. Increasingly, they will have to develop them—through trainee programs, corporate academies, paid internships, partnerships with universities and colleges, mentoring, and entry-level positions.
Artificial intelligence may make this process more complicated, as it takes over some of the routine work. But at the same time, it makes it even more important to teach what machines cannot yet provide automatically: responsibility, working with people, decision-making, understanding context, and the ability to take ownership of results.
And this is precisely where the story about young people ceases to be merely a story about someone who can’t find a job after college. It’s now a matter of sustaining the Ukrainian labor market.
If companies today do not give the new generation the opportunity to become junior employees, in a few years they may face a much more costly problem—a shortage of middle and senior-level employees whom no one trained in the first place.
And then the familiar question from young candidates—“Where can I get experience if no one will hire me without it?”—will come back to employers in a mirror image: Where can we find experienced employees if no one ever gave them their first job?
