Systemic analysis of the impact of the personnel deficit on the implementation periods of construction projects in Ukraine in 2026

Macroeconomic context and scale of the personnel crisis

As of 2026, the national economy of Ukraine functions under unprecedented demographic and structural pressure. The most acute challenge for ensuring vital activity and rebuilding infrastructure has become the global personnel shortage, which permeates all links of supply chains. According to the aggregated calculations of the Ministry of Economy, the total labor shortage in the country is estimated at four and a half million workers. In this architecture of the nationwide crisis, construction stands out as one of the most vulnerable and critically important sectors. The industry, which is entrusted with the fundamental task of rebuilding more than one hundred seventy thousand damaged or completely destroyed residential buildings, hundreds of railway stations, thousands of educational institutions, and dozens of airports, is forced to operate at only sixty percent of its capacity recorded in the pre-war year of 2021.

The paradox of the current situation is that the stagnation of construction sites is mostly due not to a lack of financial capital or bureaucratic hurdles in the field of permits, but to the physical absence of people. Labor market research conducted under the auspices of the European Business Association and the Institute for Economic Research records a systemic deterioration of the situation: while in March of this year, forty-five percent of enterprises complained about difficulties in finding personnel, by April this figure had grown to fifty-six percent, and the overall anti-record of companies experiencing a personnel crisis reached sixty-eight to seventy-four percent.

The depth of the imbalance in the labor market is acquiring catastrophic features: there are 2.4 vacancies for every available candidate in the construction segment. This means that the industry would not be able to cover current needs even if every available specialist worked a shift and a half. According to the Confederation of Builders of Ukraine, the personnel deficit on construction sites ranges from thirty to forty percent, and on some objects, the shortage of workers exceeds seventy percent of the approved staffing table. Such a situation leads to the fact that the implementation periods of projects become uncontrolled, and the development business model itself is threatened with systemic collapse. Analysis by the State Employment Service shows that despite the presence of more than one hundred forty-two thousand officially registered unemployed, this figure does not reflect the real potential of the market due to the absolute mismatch between the skills of job seekers and the requirements of high-tech construction.

Structural decomposition of the deficit: from workers to the engineering core

Starvation in the segment of specialized blue-collar professions

The construction process is a linear algorithm, where the absence of one link completely stops the subsequent ones. Vacancy analytics indicate that the greatest shortage is generated in the field of highly specialized professionals. The market critically lacks reinforcement workers, concrete workers, bricklayers, welders, electricians, and interior finishing masters. A separate pain point is installers of various profiles: from specialists in the installation of engineering networks to specialists in the installation of radio-electronic equipment and devices, the demand for whom in the capital region is measured in hundreds of open positions.

Modern construction requires deep expertise, and as the government notes, currently no technological solution, digitalization, or artificial intelligence is physically capable of replacing the work of a qualified plumber, bricklayer, or installer. The problem is complicated by the fact that blue-collar professions have been under the pressure of social stereotypes regarding their lack of prestige for decades. As a result, a gap in the succession of generations has formed. Even among the youth who formally acquire appropriate education, the efficiency of conversion into a real workforce remains extremely low: less than half of the graduates of higher construction educational institutions find employment in their specialty, and among vocational school graduates, this share is only from thirteen to thirty-six percent. Moreover, seventy percent of employers are forced to reject candidates due to their complete lack of practical skills, which requires additional investments of time and resources for their training directly on site.

The crisis of intellectual and managerial capital

If the shortage of line workers stops the physical processes on the site, then the deficit of engineering and technical personnel blocks the project at the stage of its inception, planning, and control. In 2025–2026, the demand for technical managers and designers acquired unprecedented proportions: according to the State Employment Center, the number of vacancies in the construction industry over the year increased by twenty-five percent, while the number of job seekers was almost half the number of offers.

Engineers are the link that provides normative, estimated, and technical supervision. In Kyiv, only at the beginning of May, there was a steady demand when employers simultaneously sought more than two hundred engineers of various profiles. Trying to fill these vacancies, corporate HR departments often make strategic mistakes. Instead of creating proposals for specific roles (design, technical supervision, production and technical support), companies create vacancy templates for “universal specialists”. Strong candidates who possess developed analytical thinking ignore vacancies without a clear indication of the type of objects, the stage of work, and the subordination structure, perceiving this as a sign of internal chaos in the company. To attract specialists of this level, developers are forced to move to more complex recruiting methods: using networking, recommendations from active foremen, activity in professional technical communities, and interaction with graduates of specialized universities.

Determinants of the personnel collapse

The formation of the current personnel hunger is a consequence of the convergence of several powerful factors of a long-term nature. The primary shock was the full-scale war and the related mobilization. In some construction companies and contracting organizations, the share of mobilized male workers ranged from twenty-five to sixty percent. For example, the engineering and construction company Rauta lost two and a half brigades of specialists in Mykolaiv just since the beginning of 2024 due to conscription. In addition to the physical withdrawal of personnel from the economy, a powerful factor is psychological pressure: specialists deliberately avoid official employment in large cities or refuse the shift method of construction, fearing conscription, which leads to the shadowization of part of the workforce in local segments.

The second factor is massive and irreversible emigration. The process of the outflow of highly qualified Ukrainian builders to European Union countries, in particular Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany, was initiated by the introduction of the visa-free regime back in 2017. With the outbreak of hostilities, this trend intensified, and many specialists who left or managed to reunite with their families abroad do not plan to return in the near future due to more stable working conditions and higher pay in the EU. Internal migration has also changed the geography of the workforce: specialists from frontline regions are scattered throughout the country, and by no means all of them have resumed their professional activities in new places.

The third important aspect is the immediate danger of labor and a high level of professional burnout. Working in war conditions, constant air raid alerts, and sometimes uncompetitive labor organization conditions contribute to significant staff turnover. According to research, dangerous working conditions firmly hold the third place among the main business problems. All these factors combined create a situation where the end of hostilities will not automatically solve the deficit problem. On the contrary, the surge in demand for reconstruction in the post-war period will exacerbate it to critical limits, since for successful economic recovery, the country needs to at least double the number of builders by 2032.

Mechanics of impact on the implementation periods of construction projects

The personnel shortage has a direct, mathematically expressed, and cascading impact on the implementation periods of residential and infrastructure projects. According to real estate market experts’ estimates, the average delay in putting new buildings into operation in Ukraine in 2026 increased to eighteen to twenty-four months. This delay is a consequence of the destruction of technological chains on construction sites.

The construction process relies on a strict schedule of works, where the next stage cannot be started until the previous one is completed. For example, if there is an insufficient number of concrete workers on site, the process of pouring the monolithic frame slows down significantly. This, in turn, makes it impossible for bricklaying teams to enter the site to erect walls. Even with a ready “box” of the building, the absence of such specialists as installers of window and facade systems, electricians, or plumbing specialists completely blocks the transition to the final internal works. Statistics confirm these processes: in Kyiv, active work is being carried out on only sixty percent of residential complexes where sales are currently open. On the remaining forty percent of objects, construction dynamics have either fallen to a critical minimum or have been completely frozen. An indicator of such slowdowns for investors is a situation when new floors do not appear on the site for months, and the presence of equipment is just an imitation of activity.

This technological delay generates a powerful financial backlash. The development model in Ukraine traditionally depends on continuous funding by raising funds from investors (buyers) at the construction stage. Developers often reinvest funds from new sales into the completion of previous phases. When investors notice that the implementation periods are constantly shifting, and the site stands empty due to a lack of people, they stop buying real estate. A decrease in cash flow deprives the company of liquidity. Without working capital, the developer loses the ability to purchase materials and pay premium salaries to the few specialists remaining on the market. Thus, the primary personnel shortage transforms into a secondary financial deficit, creating a vicious circle that turns the project into a problematic unfinished construction.

Economic and price consequences of the personnel crisis

Competition for a limited resource of skilled labor has provoked an aggressive struggle among companies using financial instruments. Labor market research for 2025-2026 demonstrates an unprecedented dynamic in the revision of the payroll fund. Eighty-three percent of enterprises actively hired personnel, while ninety-six percent of companies increased salaries for their employees in 2025, and in plans for 2026, further wage growth is a priority for ninety-four percent of employers. While in 2022-2024 annual wage growth in construction stood at twenty percent, in 2025 this indicator accelerated to twenty-five to thirty percent.

Analysis of job search platforms demonstrates a significant increase in both the number of vacancies and median salaries for key specialists.

Personnel category	Dynamics of the number of vacancies (year-over-year)	Median salary (UAH, 2026)
Bricklayer	+10%	60 000
Foreman	+9%	49 800
Excavator operator	+22%	45 000
Installer	+9%	45 000
Plumber	+9%	42 500
Electrician	+37%	38 300
Design engineer	+27%	32 500
Assembler (manufacturing)	+43%	31 300
Handyman / Helper	+34-35%	27 000 – 27 500

It should be noted that in major economic hubs these figures can be significantly higher. In Kyiv, the average salary of a skilled builder easily crosses the mark of 50 thousand hryvnias, in Lviv it is about 45 thousand, and in Dnipro it stays at the level of 40 thousand. Despite this, financial stimulation does not always yield results, as in many regions there are simply no people physically.

In parallel with a record increase in personnel costs, construction companies face inflation in the building materials market, where world prices for steel, concrete, and glass remain high, and logistics continue to become more expensive. The synergy of these factors has led to the fact that the total prime cost of construction and installation works on the Ukrainian market has increased by approximately thirty-five percent.

Developers predictably shift this financial burden onto the shoulders of end consumers. As a result, the market records a steady rise in prices for primary real estate.

City / Region	Price dynamics in 2025	Current average cost of 1 m² (USD)
Kyiv	Stable growth	$2 112 (business class > $3 000)
Lviv	+6%	$1 503 (business class $1 800 – $2 000)
Odesa	+16%	$1 165
Dnipro	Moderate growth	$913
Khmelnytskyi	+14%	No exact data
Lutsk, Zhytomyr, Ternopil	+12%	No exact data
Ivano-Frankivsk	+8%	No exact data

An additional hidden factor in the price increase is precisely the postponement of the commissioning of objects. According to experts’ estimates, from the moment of laying the foundation pit to the final commissioning into operation, due to the need to constantly additionally finance the project and cover inflation risks, the cost of a square meter may additionally increase by another fifteen to twenty-five percent compared to initial calculations. Thus, the implementation periods directly correlate with the final cost of the product for the investor.

Tactical and strategic tools for market stabilization

Given that internal demographic reserves are practically exhausted, the state and the private sector have begun to implement a set of measures aimed at saving the industry and ensuring opportunities for rebuilding. These measures cover a wide range: from international recruiting to a deep transformation of the national education system and a change in mobilization rules.

International migration as an alternative-free anti-crisis measure

The most noticeable tactical change on construction sites in Ukraine has been the massive involvement of labor migrants. In a situation where the construction industry lost up to twenty-five percent of its official personnel in just the first two years of the big war, the import of the workforce from Asia and Africa proved to be the only effective mechanism for preserving operational activity. According to parliamentarians’ estimates, based on European experience where migrants make up over twelve percent of the workforce, Ukraine will not be able to implement the rebuilding plan without the integration of foreigners.

Today, Ukrainian companies are actively signing contracts with workers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and the Philippines. Revealing is the experience of the Ivano-Frankivsk developer Blago Development, which, as part of expanding its portfolio of thirty-five projects, faced a critical need for bricklayers and concrete workers. Attracting Indian workers to work on the “Parkova Aleya” residential area was accompanied by certain communication crises: initially, local residents received a notification that migrants would be engaged in cleaning the territory. Later, the company explained that the specialists would exclusively perform physically heavy construction works at the final stages, in particular concreting flowerbeds and other small architectural forms.

International recruiting agencies, such as WorkMasters, play a key role in this process. During the full-scale invasion, the agency has already integrated about a hundred foreign workers and is processing requests from dozens of Ukrainian companies to attract another one hundred and thirty people. Other market players, for example, 7CI Group, are considering options for importing labor from Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan in case of further deterioration of the situation.

The economics of hiring foreigners has a dual nature. The base salary rates of migrants are lower: the labor of handymen, loaders, or entry-level electric welders is estimated at 450 dollars a month, while experienced bricklayers can count on 650 dollars. At the same time, analogous Ukrainian specialists expect from 900 dollars and above. However, according to the Institute for Economic Research, the total costs of the company for legalization, logistics, providing accommodation, and support for a migrant ultimately make their hiring twenty-five to thirty percent more expensive compared to hiring a local worker.

Despite these costs, companies take this step because of one critical advantage: foreign workers are guaranteed not to be subject to mobilization. For the project director, this means one hundred percent predictability in the execution of works, since a whole team will not be removed from the process at the most crucial moment. The work of expats takes place completely within the legal field under the supervision of migration services.

Gender requalification and inclusion programs

In parallel with the import of labor, an internal structural transformation of the labor market is taking place through the involvement of women in traditionally “male” professions. Overcoming long-standing stereotypes, women are increasingly integrating into the rebuilding processes. The large-scale IRON WOMEN initiative has become a striking example of this trend. The program offers free comprehensive requalification for women in the field of construction equipment and logistics.

Participants of the program master heavy machinery driving skills: they become drivers of front-end and forklift loaders, excavator operators, truck drivers of C and CE categories. In addition, areas are open for mastering the professions of a welder, auto mechanic, plastering and decorative works master. Training is not limited to theory; it involves working with state-of-the-art equipment from leading global brands, which immediately makes female graduates highly competitive in the labor market. Women have the opportunity to change professions through state requalification programs, obtaining vouchers from the State Employment Service, participating in grant programs from international funds, or through self-education with subsequent certification. Such initiatives not only relieve some of the personnel tension but also contribute to social stability.

Institutional reform of vocational and technical education

A strategic solution to overcome the skills imbalance is a radical reform of the vocational education system, which is unfolding throughout 2025-2026 based on the new Law “On Vocational Education”. The state is finally moving away from the Soviet “PTU” model, transforming institutions into autonomous “professional colleges” or “training centers” that will function as non-profit societies with financial and personnel autonomy.

A fundamental change is granting businesses direct access to the formation of the educational process. Through the creation of Supervisory Boards, development companies can dictate their own technological requests, adapting educational programs to the realities of modern production without lengthy bureaucratic approvals of state standards. Employers have realized that technologies are developing too quickly: today’s installers and operators must possess fundamentally different skills than a decade ago. Businesses express readiness to invest in students, take them on internships under “student labor contracts”, and even independently equip workshops with modern equipment, since they understand that without quality personnel their business will have no future.

The physical transformation of vocational education spaces is an equally important component. In 2025 alone, international partners invested one hundred fifty-seven million hryvnias in the infrastructure of vocational schools so that young people could learn not on outdated mock-ups but on real modern models of machinery. To create a comfortable and attractive environment for students, an architectural guide “New Vocational School” was developed (with the participation of urban initiatives such as Big City Lab). This document standardizes approaches to renovation: instead of empty, gloomy corridors, functional coworking zones are created, the philosophy of absolute barrier-freeness is introduced for the integration of veterans and people with disabilities, and a modern design code is applied with correct navigation and ergonomic working workshops. Simultaneously, a network of dozens of “Defense of Ukraine” centers is unfolding on the basis of these institutions, which ensures the synergy of professional and security training for the youth. All these steps should turn vocational education into a “magnet” for new generations, which in the long run will saturate the market with quality “blue-collar” workers.

Updated reservation criteria as an infrastructure protection mechanism

Understanding that the economy cannot function under conditions of the constant washing out of critically important personnel, in May 2026, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted Resolution No. 692, which significantly updated the rules for reserving persons liable for military service. The aim of the innovations is to create a transparent, fair, and shadow-manipulation-protected algorithm for retaining specialists for critically important enterprises, without which stable operation of infrastructure and the economy is impossible.

A financial filter has become the main regulatory instrument. In order for a company to have the right to claim critically important status and be able to reserve its engineers, designers, and other key workers, the salary level of such an employee, as well as the average salary across the enterprise, must be at least three minimum wages, which at the time of the decision’s adoption was equivalent to 25,941 hryvnias. For companies implementing construction or restoration projects directly in frontline areas (according to the Ministry of Development’s list), a softened financial threshold is set at the level of two and a half minimum wages, or 21,618 hryvnias.

This norm has strategic significance: it makes formal reservation through fictitious companies with minimum salaries impossible, and at the same time stimulates large developers to bring their payroll funds out of the shadows, filling the state budget. In addition to financial requirements, the government eliminated opportunities for manipulating quotas. From now on, pluralists (part-time workers), as well as individuals who already have a valid deferment from mobilization on other legal grounds, will be included in the reservation quota exclusively at one primary place of work.

According to the resolution, within a month, all specialized ministries and military administrations are obliged to re-approve their criteria for determining the criticality of companies (in coordination with the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Economy), and within three months a full audit and review of the statuses of all enterprises that already had such privileges must take place. Importantly, for the entire period of this transitional audit, company statuses and already issued reservations will remain valid. This decision gave the construction business a much-needed planning horizon: developers received time to adapt their financial models to new requirements without the risk of a sudden halt in construction due to the removal of critical engineering staff.

Conclusions

Synthesizing the array of data for 2025–2026, it can be stated that the personnel shortage in Ukraine’s construction industry has evolved from a purely local-level HR problem into a macroeconomic threat of national scale. The shortage of skilled manual labor, the deficit of which ranges from thirty to forty percent, as well as an acute lack of technical and managerial core — engineers, designers, and highly specialized professionals (such as installers), have led to a fundamental failure in the operational processes of development.

This gap between market needs and available human capital has two main consequences. Firstly, the implementation periods of projects are critically prolonged. Delays in putting objects into operation by a year and a half to two years have become the new norm, which generates a liquidity crisis for companies due to falling investor confidence. Secondly, fierce competition for the remnants of the workforce provoked an unprecedented increase in salaries (up to 30% annually), which, combined with the rising cost of materials, increased the prime cost of construction and installation works by thirty-five percent and proportionally raised prices per square meter for the end buyer across the country.

Overcoming this systemic crisis requires a combined approach. Tactical tools, such as the aggressive attraction of foreign labor migrants from Asian and African countries, allow developers to maintain schedules for critical processes thanks to expats’ immunity to mobilization. At the same time, the strategic resilience of the industry depends on internal reforms. A comprehensive modernization of vocational and technical education providing it with financial autonomy, attracting multimillion-dollar foreign investments in the infrastructure of educational institutions, actively involving women in heavy specialties through requalification programs, as well as introducing transparent and predictable reservation mechanisms with clear financial criteria — all these steps should form a new foundation for the construction sector. Only a balanced use of foreign experience and the restoration of its own human capital will allow Ukraine to transition from a survival mode of the construction business to a full-fledged phase of large-scale post-war rebuilding.