In mid-June 2026, I had the honour of visiting Ukraine for the first Economic Resilience Forum, where we heard discussions about how the Ukrainian economy can operate, survive and resist under the unimaginable circumstances of war, and what can be expected after the war. Obviously, there was a lot of discussion about Ukraine's future accession to the European Union, accessing and using currently available EU funds, government programmes provided for small- and medium-sized enterprises, restarting agricultural production in occupied and liberated territories, and many other issues.
However, what really caught my attention was something entirely different. A panellist representing an employers' organisation spoke about two thousand newly created engineering jobs, a significant share of which were filled by workers internally displaced from the eastern regions of the country due to the invasion.
Ukraine's population before the Russian invasion was approximately 40 million.
Since the beginning of the invasion, this number has changed significantly and in many different ways. The exact scale of military losses is unknown due to the nature of the war, and different estimates vary significantly. In addition, civilian casualties may number in the tens of thousands.
Obviously, the numbers are tragic, whatever they are: behind every person lost there are broken families, orphaned children, widowed adults and parents burying their children. The war has torn apart countless small communities. These losses are unimaginable and irreplaceable.
However, these losses and forced social transformations also have cold, practical consequences – consequences that pose, and will continue to pose, serious challenges to current and future Ukrainian governments, as well as to Europe and, in some respects, the entire world. Demographic changes like these, especially when they happen so suddenly, inevitably hit the economy, very much including the labour market. Beyond those who have fled the country and those who have been killed, the economy and the labour market are and will also be affected by those who have suffered lifelong injuries during the war, those evacuated within Ukraine and those living with post-traumatic stress – for generations.
The question therefore goes far beyond the expected development of unemployment. ILO Convention No. 122 on Employment Policy also approaches employment policy within a broader framework: the promotion of full, productive and freely chosen employment, in accordance with economic and social objectives.
The war has been going on for years. Those who fled or were evacuated – within or outside the country – have been building new lives for years. In most cases they had to start from zero, but they did it because they had no other choice. By now they have jobs and have integrated into their workplaces, their children into their new schools and their families into local communities. They fell in love, got married, had children – in the case of those who fled abroad, not rarely with partners of other ethnicities – and took out mortgages. Quite a few Ukrainian refugee children have now spent more than half of their lives not in their original homes, but in the places where their families found refuge. We have to ask the question: what is realistic? How many will actually return to their original homes after peace is made? To a home that, in many cases, no longer exists. Quite possibly the entire apartment block no longer exists. Neither does the school, the doctor's office, the hospital or the railway station.
The societies of Ukraine's eastern regions have been broken apart, scattered around the world, and cannot be recreated in their original form.
While probably millions have disappeared from the Ukrainian labour market, immediately after peace there will be a critical need for a huge number of workers to rebuild transport, economic, energy and housing infrastructure. These are also jobs traditionally performed by physically healthy and strong men. The involvement of migrant workers in reconstruction will be unavoidable, but we will also probably see new methods and tools emerge that help involve women and people with reduced working capacity in these tasks. It will be worth paying attention to this, because the lessons learned here may help increase labour-market inclusion globally in the long term.
While the workforce is undergoing such professional and geographical rearrangement, the employment system itself will also need to adapt significantly. Interestingly, ILO Convention No. 88 on Employment Service already included, back in 1948, among the responsibilities of employment services the facilitation of occupational and geographical mobility, as well as collecting and analysing information on the current situation and expected development of the labour market.
After peace, the new and radically transformed Ukrainian society will face further challenges as well. Hundreds of thousands – and quite possibly millions – of widows and orphans, working-age people living with limb loss, loss of sight or hearing, and people suffering from post-traumatic stress will require healthcare and mental-health services, while at the same time they will be needed in rebuilding the economy and society, and affected children will need to be present in the education system. The necessary development of healthcare, social and educational systems can only be done effectively with the cooperation of the international community. Research universities, public and private service providers and international organisations around the world must be ready to support the development of the new Ukrainian society with professionals, training, equipment, knowledge or even software systems, so that this society can be as healthy as possible. If we, as humanity, do this well, the lessons learned here will provide invaluable help in future conflict- and disaster-affected areas. The importance of Ukraine's new care economy simply cannot be overestimated. At the same time, it can provide countless lessons to the rest of the world: an ageing, increasingly mobile and increasingly individualised global society will need a very well-functioning, respected and modern care economy, and Ukrainian reconstruction can teach us very important lessons about this. Every society that is paying attention will be there to learn.
Another unavoidable task for Ukrainian governments in the coming decades will be to pay particular attention to demographic developments, especially indicators related to sex, age and ethnicity. Changes in the sex distribution will be important both for reproduction rates and for maintaining internal social stability – we only have to think about the ratio of similarly aged men and women approaching their first marriage. Age data will be critical for assessing future care needs, while ethnic data will be important for preserving cultural diversity and for the long-term peaceful and constructive coexistence of ethnically homogeneous communities. The basic principle applies here as well: what you do not know, you cannot prepare for. You cannot get ahead of problems you cannot see. The labour-market side of this is not a new recognition either. ILO Recommendation No. 122 treats the analysis of the present and future size and distribution of the labour force, as well as trends in employment and unemployment, as part of the foundations of employment policy. After a demographic shock of this scale, the importance of this obviously multiplies.
The situation of young people will also deserve particular attention. As Ukraine's EU accession process advances, the EU's reinforced Youth Guarantee becomes increasingly relevant. It aims to ensure that people under the age of 30 receive a good-quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within four months. What specific challenges and opportunities this will create in Ukraine after a war and demographic transformation of this scale is an interesting question in itself.
Looking at the enormous number of challenges that restructuring the Ukrainian economy and labour market, together with the labour needs of reconstruction, will create, we can only sincerely hope that despite the impossible circumstances of the present, there are people within Ukrainian government structures already planning how refugees and evacuees can be attracted back home. Ukraine's leadership needs to be fully prepared for peace from this perspective as well. Job fairs and professional networking events targeting local Ukrainian communities will be needed around the world; indeed, Ukraine itself should already be embedded in the largest communities of evacuated and refugee Ukrainians from this perspective. Returning home will have to be streamlined both bureaucratically and logistically, businesses, companies and factories will need support in large-scale recruitment, while housing will have to be provided for large numbers of people essentially from minute zero.
It is particularly important to prepare for the involvement of the Ukrainian diaspora that will remain abroad, because they can represent an important resource in reconstruction. This could include "patriotic" government bonds specifically targeting them, state-secured micro-investments connected to the market, or networks and connections that can be channelled back home. The opportunities pulsating within the diaspora cannot be taken lightly.
We also cannot ignore that in the future Ukraine will have to account for a significant population participating in circular migration. This brings economic opportunities and substantial "knowledge brought home", but it also creates tasks: the most important destination countries for this phenomenon need to be identified, and existing agreements concerning employment and social security with these countries should be reviewed and updated to reflect the new reality. This will be particularly important because if there is a major destination country with no adequate agreement, or with a poor-quality one, it may convince large numbers of Ukrainians to choose that country as their new permanent home. Good agreements, on the other hand, can make people more open to circular or mobile migration. As EU integration progresses, all of this will become increasingly connected to the European systems of labour mobility, recognition of qualifications and portability of social rights. The labour-market questions of reconstruction will therefore become increasingly difficult to separate from Ukraine's European integration.
Another task will be preparing for the informal economy that reconstruction will inevitably attract. For historical reasons, Central and Eastern Europe is generally more tolerant of undeclared work. Many countries – Ukraine among them – have spent enormous amounts of time, money and energy over recent decades trying to reduce the informal economy. If the responsible authorities are not vigilant now, the informal economy may not only severely infect the reconstruction period – bringing with it everything that comes with it: lack of social protection, lack of employment security, exploitation and lack of quality control – but may remain with Ukraine for decades. This is not a secondary question from the perspective of EU accession either. Approximation to the employment and social-policy acquis will take place in parallel with reconstruction, meaning that the further development of labour-law, occupational-safety, social-security and related institutional frameworks cannot be separated from economic reconstruction.
And labour-market problems will not appear only in the regions most severely affected by the war. The world has adapted to several million Ukrainian refugees. Both within and outside Ukraine, economies have by now developed around this suddenly appearing workforce and have come to rely on them. When peace inevitably arrives sooner or later, whatever happens, large numbers of these refugees and evacuees will begin returning home, creating immediate labour shortages and upward wage pressure in the countries and cities where they spent the war. Companies that currently rely on them should already be preparing for the post-war period and considering what they will do with their production and services when peace finally comes.