Millions have left Ukraine and might have labor shortage

**Dragoon** · 09-05-2018, 08:20 AM

Nearly a million Ukrainians are leaving the country every year, according to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin, warning the country will face severe labor shortages in the years to come.

"We are really in a catastrophic situation with a million Ukrainians leaving every year," the minister said in an interview with Ukrainian ICTV.

Klimkin said that Poland alone has received around 1.4 million Ukrainians recently, and that nearly 30 percent of the population of the western Polish city of Wroclaw now speaks Ukrainian.

According to Ukraine's foreign ministry, about three million Ukrainian migrants currently live in Russia, and up to two million in Poland.

Kiev reportedly sees labor migration as the second biggest threat to the country's national security. According to a poll carried out by Research & Branding Group last June, 33 percent of Ukrainians were ready to leave the country for good and move to another country for permanent residence.

Labor migration from Ukraine has been growing over the past five years. Apart from Russia and Poland, Ukrainians are moving to Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Spain.

The current situation is expected to worsen in the years to come, according to Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Social Policy Olga Krentovska. In April, she said the current labor migration would lead to labor shortages that will put Ukraine's economic stability at risk in just a couple of decades.

Kiev has appealed to Ukrainians leaving the country, attempting to persuade them to choose European countries over migrating to Russia. Last week, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan said that Kiev may sever all remaining public transport links with Russia, which includes passenger trains and buses, due to national security concerns.

Ukraine's population has seen a dramatic decline since the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. From its 1993 peak of more than 52 million people, the country's population had decreased by nearly 10 million by the end of 2016, according to official figures. That's a net 18 percent drop.

https://www.sott.net/article/395111-...s-flee-country

**renaissance12** · 09-05-2018, 08:41 AM

I'm not racist but i would prefer immigrants from Ukraine than from any Others muslims region

**Dragoon** · 09-05-2018, 08:44 AM

he result is that one in six Ukrainians of working age now migrate to Europe to work, says a 2018 report by the Center for Economic Strategy. Many start as seasonal workers or short-term work permit holders then end up staying.

Between 2002 and 2017, 6.3 million Ukrainians permanently left, or more than 400,000 annually. This represents an enormous brain drain equivalent to the population of the city of Mariupol.

Then after the 2014 Revolution of Dignity and war with Russia numbers rose. Between 2015 and 2017 migration increased to 507,000 to Poland alone; 147,000 to Italy; 122,000 to Czech Republic; 23,000 to the United States; and 365,000 due to the war in the Donbas and Crimea to Russia or Belarus.

Historically, Ukrainian communities have thrived for decades in Canada and the United States as well as Brazil and Argentina. But more recent communities have sprung up in Europe: an estimated 300,000 Ukrainians in Italy, 45,000 in Portugal, 100,000 in Spain, and more than 2 million in Poland.

Ukraine’s depopulation is not unique in Europe. According to UN figures, the ten countries with the fastest-shrinking populations in the world are all former Eastern bloc nations, forecasted to sustain population drops of 15 percent by 2050. This widespread reduction in young workers in Europe is why Ukrainians are being sought. They are good workers, available on short notice, and earn the lowest average salaries in Europe.

“Our Ukrainian workers, the younger ones, are the best workers we have,” said an industrialist with a huge workforce engaged in the manufacturing and engineering tech and auto parts. “Others just cannot compare.”

Poland has relied the most on this influx as its aging workforce, and its own brain drain of workers to Western Europe, have created job openings. In the first quarter of 2018, Polish work permits to Ukrainians were up 40 percent for a total of 100,000 more than any quarter the year before.

https://www.iri.org/resource/ukraine...lantic-council

**Loki** · 09-05-2018, 09:05 AM

Catastrophic and sad....the country's woes are entirely self-inflicted. If they were friendly to Russia and didn't dance to NATO's tunes, Ukraine would have been prosperous and well-fed today with a happy population. But no.. they thought they knew better... Well, history is the judge that they made catastrophic geopolitical mistakes in their decisions.

Ukraine is governed by a bunch of crooks. Poroshenko is a thug. Yanukovitch may not have been perfect, but Ukraine was ten times better off under him.