At the beginning of the 2025-2026 marketing year (July-June), the agricultural sector is actively reviewing salaries, with 79% of agricultural companies having already raised staff salaries and another 21% planning to do so by the end of 2025, according to the results of a study by Agrohub.
According to the study, the agronomic service is showing the highest income growth rates among key personnel categories: 81% of companies have raised agronomists’ salaries by 15-25%.
In engineering services, the majority (among 54% of companies) of salary increases were within 20%, among 18% of companies, incomes increased by more than 25%, and among another 18%, incomes remained unchanged.
A similar balance is observed among elevator personnel, where companies’ approaches range from moderate indexation to no change at all. In the land service, indexation of approximately 15% prevails (63% of companies), 27% increased income by 20-25%, and another 18% added more than 25% to salaries.
Among the survey participants who have already reviewed their employees’ income for 2025, 55% of companies have livestock farming in their business structure. The dynamics in this area vary: while in dairy and beef cattle farming, employees’ incomes have increased by 15-20% on average, there have been virtually no changes in pig farming.
In addition, among personnel on a combined form of payment (fixed + piecework), the largest increase in income was among machine operators (mainly by more than 25%), drivers — up to 20%, and colleagues from elevators — up to 15%. Furthermore, an analysis of piecework rates shows that they increased by 10–20% for machine operators and drivers, and by up to 15% for elevator personnel.
At the same time, most survey participants raised salaries starting in April 2025. Among the main reasons, companies cite the alignment of wages with market rates, competition for personnel, inflation expectations, and better-than-expected financial results for the season.
“We see that the labor market in the agricultural sector is proactive. Agronomists remain a key category for business, and companies are willing to invest in their motivation. The preference now is for increasing the salary component: it is more expensive for the employer, but more effective for retaining staff,” said Dmitry Lebedev, head of Agrohub Benchmarking, whose words are quoted in the report.
Agrohub conducted the HR360 Benchmarking study “Changes in the income levels of crop, livestock, and elevator personnel in 2025” in July 2025 among the 14 largest agricultural holdings in Ukraine with a total land bank of about 2 million hectares and a staff of more than 65,000 people.
