More than 80% of Ukrainian agricultural companies raised employee salaries by 10–20% in the first half of 2026; however, the labor shortage remains one of the industry’s key challenges, and recruiting has become more difficult than last year, according to a study by the analytical firm Agrohub.
According to the study, 81% of the companies surveyed have already adjusted their pay scales. Salaries rose most sharply for agronomists, engineers, tractor operators, and drivers—precisely the categories of workers where the labor shortage is most acute. To retain drivers, piecework rates and variable pay components were increased more often than fixed salaries.
The greatest labor shortages in the first half of the year were observed among tractor operators, drivers, engineers, and grain elevator workers. All survey participants cited mobilization as the main factor complicating the search for personnel; 69% cited a shortage of qualified specialists, and 56% cited rising salary expectations among candidates. Other reasons included population migration and competition among employers.
In response to the labor shortage, agricultural holdings are increasingly recruiting workers from other regions of Ukraine, as well as people aged 50 and older and women for positions that were traditionally considered male-dominated. In addition, companies are investing in in-house staff training and the automation of production processes to reduce their reliance on hard-to-fill positions.
“Companies have met their targets for the first half of the year and increased employee compensation; however, filling a vacancy today often costs more than retaining a current specialist. At the same time, we see that financial incentives are proving insufficient as the sole tool—the endless ‘salary race’ cannot overcome the physical shortage of workers in the market,” commented Dmytro Lebedev, head of the HR360 division at Agrohub.
According to him, in the second half of the year, companies will shift their focus from large-scale salary increases to automation, the development of internal training, expanding recruitment channels, and revising work organization models.
Agrohub’s study was conducted in June 2026 among 16 agricultural holdings with a combined land bank of 2.2 million hectares, operating in crop production, livestock farming, and the grain storage business.
agricultural company, agricultural sector, employee, SALARY, workforce
Since 2021, 8,644 agricultural companies have been registered in Ukraine, while 3,416 companies have been closed, according to the Opendatabot service.
According to the resource, agricultural companies were most actively registered in 2021, when 2,678 companies appeared. With the start of the full-scale invasion, the number of registrations dropped to 1,558. However, starting in 2023, the agricultural sector revived: 1,697 new companies appeared in a year. Between January and July 2025, 869 new agricultural enterprises were registered.
Analyzing data on the closure of agricultural enterprises, analysts noted that the largest number of closures occurred in 2021 (1,070 companies) and in 2024 (685). This year, 536 agricultural companies decided to cease operations.
The largest number of new agricultural companies was recorded in the Odesa region — 612. Next are Kyiv (600), Lviv region (597), Vinnytsia (591), and Dnipropetrovsk (535). The fewest were in the frontline regions of Luhansk (40), Donetsk (101), and Zaporizhzhia (147). However, agribusinesses are not very active in Chernivtsi (120) and Zakarpattia (171) regions either.
The largest number of agricultural companies closed in the Odesa region — 606. There were also many closures in the Dnipropetrovsk (225), Khmelnytskyi (201), Kyiv (199), and Mykolaiv (191) regions. The fewest closures were in Luhansk (21), Donetsk (49), Ivano-Frankivsk (49), and Kyiv (55).
Analysts noted that 1,738 agricultural companies relocated to other regions during this period. Of these, 346 agribusinesses moved to western regions of Ukraine over the past five years. Almost half of the relocators who decided to move west chose Lviv region as their new region for doing business — 166 companies. Rivne (54 companies), Volyn (39), Khmelnytskyi (30), and Zakarpattia (19) regions are also popular among businesses changing their registration.
In addition, a number of agricultural companies that have opened during this time are steadily increasing their wealth. The top five newcomers actively expanding their operations include Farmzaat Ukraine, whose revenue grew 3.3 times in 2024 to UAH 770 million; Niva-Plus, which earned 1.5 times more than in 2023, at UAH 530 million; Agroprotekhnika – 2.7 times, to UAH 392 million, Krasnopavlivsky KHP – 1.3 times, to UAH 308 million, and Agrofirma Malynivska – 2.8 times, to UAH 299 million.
