Only 12.8 million Ukrainians of 28.5 million working-age citizens are legally employed in Ukraine, while the rest have either found jobs beyond Ukraine’s borders or have no contractual ties with their employers at home, says economy minister Tymofiy Mylovanov.
Informal employment, Mylovanov says, means that most Ukrainians are not protected by labor legislation.
“The amendments to the Labor Code that the government puts forward should facilitate legal employment and increase the number of jobs,” said Mylovanov.
On December 27, 2019, the government approved the bill on labor. Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said the legislation provided for an increase in the number of legal jobs, an increase in income, and the expansion of social rights of employees.
On December 23, 2019, the Ministry of Economy published a clause of the future labor code that defined labor relations. In the existing legislation, such clause is missing. Innovations could affect the IT industry where many Ukrainians are registered as “individual entrepreneurs”.
On October 10, 2019, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that the new labor code was better than the previous one, but it still needed to be finalized. (UNIAN/Business World Magazine)