Toward a Skilled Workforce – Rebuilding Ukraine’s Human Capital

Dariia Mykhailyshyna, senior economist at CES, presented our latest research wave on Ukrainian refugees abroad at the pre-Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024 in Berlin.

According to our estimates, as of the end of January 2024, 4.9 million Ukrainians are living abroad because of the war. The largest share of Ukrainian refugees in Europe is in Germany (30%) and Poland (22%). 

Outside of Europe, the largest countries in terms of the number of Ukrainians accepted since the beginning of the full-scale invasion are the United States (280,000), the United Kingdom (253,200) and Canada (210,200).

“The majority still plan to return, but unfortunately, the percentage of people who want to return decreases from wave to wave. This could be because people who could have wanted to return have already returned, and also due to changing intentions, for many reasons, maybe integration in the labour market, maybe because their expectations about the duration of the war were not met, and so on», adds Dariia Mykhailyshyna.

“As of our last wave, 38% are children, which is a high percentage, and 70% have higher education, which is higher compared to the average number of Ukrainians who have higher education and much higher than the previous waves of refugees that Europe has encountered. This may result in some brain drain issues with Ukraine because people who are most educated unfortunately left.”

Soon, the full report will be available on our website. Read the presentation or watch the discussion recording of our research on Ukrainian refugees here.