At the beginning of 2025, the number of open vacancies in Ukraine exceeded the number of active job seekers for the first time. However, the market remains unbalanced: 74% of companies are experiencing a shortage of qualified personnel, with the most acute lack in construction and defense industry. The government's response was a program that turns to a resource that has remained on the sidelines until now.
Three steps instead of a single job posting
The "Experience Matters" program, launched by the Cabinet of Ministers together with the State Employment Center, business, and public partners, is built as a sequential chain of three stages.
- Preparation: resume updates, adaptation to current market requirements, acquisition of practical skills — all free of charge.
- Internship: short-term practical experience directly in the company. The employer evaluates the candidate in real conditions before making a hiring decision.
- Employment: final transition to a position for those who completed the internship.
To participate, applicants need to fill out a form with personal information, place of residence, level of education, previous experience, and contacts.
What actually prevents people 50+ from finding work
The "Labor Market After 50" study, which the government references, records a paradox: employers value the reliability and experience of older candidates, but they are most often filtered out at the very beginning.
"65% of companies cite a barrier of digital skills, while 60% acknowledge the impact of age stereotypes during hiring"
Yulia Svyrydenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine
In other words, the problem is not that a person doesn't know how to work — but that they don't know Excel or don't have a video call platform account. The program is aimed precisely at this gap.
Broader context: who will fill the labor market
According to NV Business, 96% of Ukrainian companies raised salaries in 2025 — a direct consequence of labor shortage. At the same time, 46% of employers report the impact of youth emigration on their HR strategy. In these conditions, people 50+ become not a "backup option," but a structural necessity — especially for sectors where manual and technical work cannot be quickly automated.
Notably, business in the program is not merely an observer: employers gain access to a database of pre-trained candidates, which reduces some of the costs of initial screening.
What remains open
The program is described as a three-way partnership project, but neither the funding volume, nor the number of places in the first intake, nor the criteria for evaluating employers after the internship have been publicly disclosed. If the state truly bets on people 50+ as a systemic resource, not as a one-time PR gesture — the key indicator will be not the number of submitted applications, but the share of interns who received an official employment contract following the first cycle.
