The number of employees in the top 50 IT-companies in the period from August 2022 to January 2023 decreased by 5.3% to 92.4 thousand due to relocation in foreign offices of companies and legalization abroad, such research results were published on the DOU website on Monday.
According to him, most companies have up to 25% of their Ukrainian team members abroad.
“As the companies explained, the reduction, with some exceptions, does not mean a reduction in the number of specialists in the company. The IT specialists moved abroad to work in other offices of their own companies, they legalize there and stop paying taxes in Ukraine,” reads the text of the research.
Its authors recall that before the full-scale war, in January 2022, 50 largest IT-companies employed 100.3 thousand people, and in January 2021 – 76.3 thousand people.
It is noted that mostly companies began to actively legalize abroad it is technical specialists. If in the first half of 2022 the number of technical specialists was kept at the same level, in the second half there is a clear negative trend: minus 4.6 thousand specialists. The total number of technical specialists in the top 25 IT companies in January 2023 was 57.9 thousand compared to 62.5 thousand in January 2022.
In the five largest companies (Epam Ukraine, SoftServe, GlobalLogic Ukraine, EVOPLAY, Luxoft) the number of specialists decreased by 3.3 thousand in the second half of 2022, according to the study.
In particular, in company Epam Ukraine which occupies the first step in DOU rating, the number of working specialists decreased on 1260 persons in the first half-year of 2022 and 1225 in the second – to present 11,375 thousand persons (working in Ukraine or continuing to pay taxes in Ukraine even in case of moving abroad). The number of technical specialists of the company decreased by 9% to 10.4 thousand people. It is noted that some of the company’s specialists left Ukraine to escape the war and remain there. Jobs for EPAM in Ukraine today are few, because the need for specialists will be covered mainly through bench – internal specialists of the company, the material says.
The number of employees in Ukraine SoftServe (2nd place) decreased by 164 people in the first half of 2022 and by 1468 people in the second half – to 9.45 thousand people. The company has 22% fewer technicians (7,393). These changes are also explained by relocation: about 2 thousand SoftServe specialists moved abroad after the start of the full-scale invasion. Some of them returned, but many of them still stay abroad and now legalize in other locations of the company. Also, according to the DOU, there is some optimization going on, but not a massive one.
