According to the estimates the number of labor migrants from Ukraine reaches 4 mln persons, meanwhile about 2.6-2.7 mln persons can stay outside the country. It is reported by the Centre for Economic Strategies. The most powerful factor is economic, the Ukrainians seek higher payment for work. Currently, the migration flow bears a shuttle, short-term character: the majority of labor migrants earn money abroad and wish to get back to Ukraine.
“Indisputably, the Crimean annexation and deployment of military actions in Donbas have also affected the Ukrainians’ migration. These circumstances combined with the simplification of the legislation in the countries of the Eastern Europe, have changed the structure of migration flows. However, Russia is still one of the most popular migration flows. Since 2014 the migration flows has been changed from Russia to Poland. Generally, for the years 2014-2016 Ukrainians started to travel in the western direction by 42% more often, and the number of the migrants, who moved officially for earnings, has increased in three times.
It is mentioned that the most noticeable positive factor of Ukrainians’ external labor migration is that the most part of money earned abroad return to Ukraine. These funds support the rate of the national currency and finance the households.
The major negative factors are the labor market disbalancing, higher expectations of the workers regarding the salary size, possible deepening in wealth between the households, ineffective use of state costs for social protection.
“Ukraine shall develop efficient policy in the migration sphere in order to have an opportunity to make the consequences more under control. Policy development shall be based on the reliable statistic data. Thus, the top priority task of the country is to improve the data base on migration flows, which demands interagency and inter-regional coordination of efforts”, – it is summed up in the investigation.