Poland’s Deputy Minister of the Interior, Maciej Duszkiewicz, highlighted the contribution of Ukrainians to the functioning of the Polish economy. He made this statement during an appearance on Polsat News.
Polsat News reports that Duszczyk believes that in many cases, the absence of Ukrainians is noticeable. “If it weren’t for Ukrainian citizens, we’d be waiting 10 minutes for the bus instead of five. After all, they fill the gaps in the Polish labor market. That’s why a certain part of the Polish economy depends on refugees from Ukraine. Generally speaking, these are Ukrainians living in Poland, and we need to reiterate this more and more often, because if a situation were to arise where one day all Ukrainians united and refused to go to work, the Polish economy would grind to a halt,” he said.
He also criticized the Law and Justice (PiS) party’s proposal to deport unemployed men of draft age from Ukraine. In this context, the figure of 3,000 people has been mentioned in public discussions. “Three thousand is a small group. Let me remind you that 900,000 people have been mobilized in Ukraine, so this is no help at all. In fact, those who aren’t working in Poland are either caring for their disabled children or are people who were wounded on the front lines and are undergoing rehabilitation in Poland,” he said.
When asked whether refugees will begin returning to Ukraine once the war ends, Dushchyk replied that “this is a process we’ve observed in other countries, and it’s very easy to predict.”
“Sometimes, those who say, ‘I’m staying,’ end up leaving because something happens. And those who say, ‘I’ll leave as soon as the war ends,’ end up staying. Of course, these trends change with each passing month, as the roots they put down in the host society—in this case, Polish society—grow deeper and deeper. “If someone has enrolled their children in school, they’re learning Polish; if a person is working in the labor market, the likelihood that they’ll return to Ukraine without a strong incentive to do so is practically very low,” he noted.
Net migration to Germany fell to 235,000 people in 2025, compared with 663,000 in 2023, according to a study by the German Economic Institute (IW) published on July 28, 2026. Excluding the pandemic period, this is the lowest figure since 2010. Experts at the Experts Club Information and Analytical Center attribute the decline to several factors: a decrease in the number of refugees, the departure of workers from Central and Eastern European countries, a decline in migration from the Western Balkans, and an increase in emigration by German citizens themselves.
The largest net inflow from a single country in 2025 came from Ukrainian citizens, amounting to 89,000 people. A year earlier, the figure was 116,000. Ukrainians have a special status because they are admitted to Germany mainly under the EU’s temporary protection mechanism rather than through the standard asylum procedure. Further developments will depend primarily on the course of the war and the conditions of Ukrainians’ stay in Germany.
By the end of 2025, approximately 1.41 million Ukrainian citizens were listed in Germany’s Central Register of Foreigners. They became the second-largest foreign group after Turkish citizens.
The number of initial asylum applications fell from 329,000 in 2023 to 113,000 in 2025.
The inflow from Syria declined particularly sharply: the number of initial applications fell from 103,000 to 23,000. Over the same period, the number of applicants from Afghanistan decreased from 51,000 to 24,000, while the number from Turkey fell from 61,000 to 12,000.
At the end of 2025, the largest groups of people registered in Germany as being in need of protection remained citizens of Ukraine, at approximately 1.164 million; Syria, at 669,000; and Afghanistan, at 321,000.
IW links the decline in Syrian migration primarily to the change in the situation in Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2024, as well as to the tightening of German and EU migration policies.
Another important change was the reversal of migration from the new EU member states.
In 2023, Germany recorded a net inflow of approximately 42,000 citizens from these countries. In 2024, 35,000 more people left Germany than arrived, while in 2025 the net outflow reached 45,000 people.
This group includes, in particular, citizens of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, and other countries that joined the EU from 2004 onward. Economists explain migrants’ return by the narrowing gap in wages and living standards, growing demand for workers in their own countries, and the overall ageing of the population of Central and Eastern Europe.
At the end of 2025, approximately 904,000 Romanian citizens and 840,000 Polish citizens were registered in Germany. Over the year, the number of Polish citizens declined by approximately 25,000, while the total number of EU citizens fell by 75,000.
In recent years, citizens of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia have been actively recruited into the German labour market, including under special rules for the Western Balkans. However, their net migration has been steadily declining since 2022. In 2025, it amounted to approximately 39,000 people. IW warns that the potential for further recruitment of workers from the Balkans is also limited: the populations of most countries in the region are shrinking, while their own labour markets are facing staff shortages.
Against the backdrop of the overall decline, there are also opposing trends. Net migration of Vietnamese citizens increased from 10,000 people in 2023 to 19,000 in 2025.
At the same time, the number of residence permits issued to citizens of non-European countries for employment purposes increased by 33,000, or 13.6%, between 2023 and 2025. The number of permits related to education also rose by 33,000, or 15.3%. Thus, the inflow of students and skilled workers is currently declining significantly more slowly than humanitarian and intra-European migration.
The net outflow of German citizens increased from 74,000 people in 2023 to 97,000 in 2025. IW notes that negative migration among German citizens occurs regularly. However, growth of approximately 30% over two years may be an alarming signal, especially if qualified specialists are leaving the country.
At the same time, part of the statistics may relate to previously naturalised migrants who return to their countries of origin after obtaining German citizenship. It is difficult to assess the structure of this outflow precisely because the final destination country is not recorded for many of those leaving.
According to the Central Register of Foreigners, approximately 14.07 million foreign nationals were living in Germany at the end of 2025.
The largest groups were:
Approximately 5 million foreigners, or 35%, were citizens of EU member states. Another 4.6 million held the citizenship of other European countries, while approximately 4.5 million represented countries in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and other regions.
If not only foreign citizens but also migrants who obtained German citizenship and their direct descendants are taken into account, Germany had approximately 21.8 million people with an immigration history in 2025, representing 26.3% of the population. The largest groups by country of birth were people from Poland and Turkey, at approximately 1.5 million each; Ukraine, at 1.3 million; and Russia and Syria, at approximately 1 million each.
The decline in migration is occurring simultaneously with the mass retirement of the baby-boomer generation. According to a separate IW forecast, by 2036 the gap between older workers leaving the labour market and young people reaching working age could reach 4.3 million people. Economists consider a return to a mass inflow of workers from Eastern Europe unlikely. Germany will have to recruit specialists and workers with medium and lower levels of formal qualifications more actively from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other regions.
IW proposes accelerating visa procedures, reducing the tax and social burden on workers, and extending simplified labour migration mechanisms similar to the existing rules for the Western Balkans to new countries. Thus, this is not about the complete cessation of migration but about a change in its structure. Germany is receiving fewer refugees and workers from neighbouring European countries, while the economy’s need for foreign labour continues to grow because of the ageing population.
The main problem in Ukraine’s labor market is a labor shortage; at the same time, between 3.5 and 5 million people of working age are excluded from the labor market, said Daria Marchak, Deputy Minister of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture, during the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC 2026) in Gdańsk (Poland) on Friday.
“Currently, three-quarters of businesses in Ukraine are facing a shortage of workers and are closing down precisely because of this labor shortage. But we have somewhere between 3.5 and 5 million people of working age who are excluded from the labor market for various reasons,” Marchak emphasized.
According to her, this group includes people with disabilities, including veterans, as well as internally displaced persons and women.
In this regard, the deputy minister considers the main task to be “doing everything possible to ensure that these people gain access to the labor market and overcome all obstacles.” To this end, she proposes a comprehensive overhaul of training systems and competency standards, as well as providing relevant retraining opportunities to anyone who wishes to participate.
Employers offered jobs to 1,554 Ukrainians aged 50 and older as part of the government’s “Experience Matters” program; as of June 22, 2026, 841 participants had successfully found employment, and another 713 are currently undergoing internships.
According to a statement on the website of the Ministry of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture of Ukraine, more than 2,300 candidates have joined the initiative overall, while employers have posted nearly 2,600 job openings.
Kyiv, as well as the Lviv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions, have shown the highest activity in terms of the number of candidates. The regions with the highest number of job openings are Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Rivne. The greatest demand is for salespeople of food and non-food items, accountants, drivers, unskilled laborers, cooks, office cleaners, security guards, seamstresses, janitors, and administrators.
The ministry notes that, given the labor shortage, workers aged 50 and older are an important group for the labor market; however, some of them face age-based stereotypes, the need to update their skills, or difficulties after a long break from work. To overcome these barriers, the program combines career counseling, assistance from the employment service, internships, and direct contact with employers.
Training, which began in the second half of June, is a separate component of the program. Specifically, the course on collaboration in intergenerational teams attracted 1,350 registrations, the course on digital tools and artificial intelligence (AI) received 1,100 applications, and the course on career strategy drew 883 applications.
The ministry added that the Ministry of Economy, the State Employment Service (SES), the Astarta agro-industrial holding, the Zhiznelub Charitable Foundation, the Federation of Employers of Ukraine (FEU), as well as the multi-donor initiative Skills4Recovery, Skills Alliance, and other partners are involved in implementing and funding the program.
As previously reported, the Ministry of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture, together with its partners, launched the “Experience Matters” internship project for adults on May 11, 2026. The initiative is being implemented as part of the National Accessibility Strategy for 2026 and aims to address the labor shortage that, according to the EBA, affects 75% of companies in Ukraine. The project model is based on three components: a training program to update resumes and prepare for job interviews; face-to-face meetings with business representatives to discuss collaboration opportunities; and a hands-on internship lasting up to 10 days to assess mutual compatibility before making a hiring decision.
During the war, the proportion of women among the unemployed rose to 81%, Stanislav Pavlenko, deputy director of the State Employment Center (SEC), said in comments to the “Interfax-Ukraine” news agency on Monday.
“While women accounted for 55% of the unemployed before the start of the full-scale war, today that proportion has risen to 81%,” Pavlenko said.
He also added that a pilot program has been in effect since 2025, allowing Ukrainian women to learn trades in fields traditionally considered male-dominated.
“Under the program’s terms, training is provided in 31 professions. A mandatory condition is that women must be employed upon completion of their training,” Pavlenko said.
Since the beginning of the year, 402 women have been enrolled in such training as part of the project.
At the same time, Pavlenko noted that “in Ukraine, data on the unemployment rate is calculated by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine based on labor force surveys.” However, starting in 2022, the results of these surveys have not been published by the statistics agency.
“According to the latest published data, in 2021 the unemployment rate (based on the methodology of the International Labor Organization) among the population aged 15–70 stood at 9.9% of the labor force,” said the official from the State Employment Service.
Labor market, State Employment Service, UNEMPLOYMENT, vocational training, WOMEN
The labor shortage in Ukraine has reached a historic high—69% of companies cited it as the main obstacle to doing business during the war, according to the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER), based on the results of its 49th monthly survey, which the IER conducted among 469 industrial enterprises.
“For several months now, the ‘labor shortage’ obstacle has been breaking records. This obstacle has remained in first place for over a year and a half, reaching a high of 69% in May. Businesses are concerned about the shortage of workers,” said IER Senior Research Fellow Yevhen Angel.
In May, there was a slight decrease in the difficulty of finding qualified workers—the share of enterprises that found it harder to recruit such workers fell from 62.3% to 60.6%. It is more difficult to find unskilled workers—for 38.4% of respondents in May, compared to 34.3% in April.
Only 2.4% of businesses plan to increase employment over the next three months, while 5.1% plan to place employees on mandatory leave.
“Rising prices for raw materials, supplies, and goods” remains the second-biggest obstacle—the figure fell slightly from 56% to 49%.
The share of those concerned about “unsafe working conditions” has decreased slightly: this issue has become an obstacle for 44% of businesses, down from 46% in April, allowing it to hold third place for the fourth consecutive month.
The pattern of “unsafe working conditions” as an obstacle remains consistent across enterprise size. Medium and large enterprises are more likely to cite this problem—48% and 47%, respectively, in May—as they are more likely to be targeted by enemy attacks.
“From a regional perspective, this obstacle is particularly acute in frontline and central regions—over 80% of respondents in the Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Odesa, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk regions cited it. In the west of the country, this obstacle is less relevant. The only exception is Rivne Oblast,” Angel said.
However, there have been noticeable changes regarding two other obstacles. The obstacle “decreased demand for products/services” rose from 26% to 38%. In addition, logistical difficulties have intensified, as evidenced by the increase in the obstacle “difficulties in transporting raw materials or finished goods across Ukraine” from 24% to 30%.
No significant changes were recorded for other obstacles. “Corruption” and “unlawful demands or pressure from law enforcement or regulatory agencies” remain “in the shadow” of the main obstacles—only 7% and 3% of respondents, respectively, mentioned them in May.
“The relevance of the obstacle ‘power outages’ remains at a relatively low level—20% in May—when compared to the winter attacks on our energy infrastructure,” Angel said.
It is noted that 31% of businesses temporarily suspended operations due to power outages in April, but mostly for short periods of time. At the same time, 41% of businesses operated continuously despite the outages. Already, 28% of businesses experienced no power outages, up from 20% the previous month.
Average working time losses amounted to 4% in April. The greatest losses of working time were observed in micro and small enterprises (57%); by industry, in the chemical industry (6%); and by region, in Kyiv (13%) and Sumy (9%) regions.
Assessments of the government’s economic policy remain neutral. “A large share of enterprises provide neutral assessments; specifically, 64% of respondents did so in May. The share of positive assessments remains low at 6%. At the same time, the share of negative assessments stands at 25%, and this gap between positive and negative assessments has persisted since the summer of 2023,” Angel summarized.
Up to 500 Ukrainian industrial enterprises located in 21 of Ukraine’s 27 regions participate in the IED’s New Monthly Enterprises Survey (#NRES). The survey has been conducted monthly since May 2022.
