Because of quarantine in Europe, some workers from Ukraine had lost their jobs and came back to their home country. As many as 2.2 million Ukrainians who worked in Europe returned home, Finance.ua reported. But now it poses problems for the economies of these countries.
Ukrainian workers do jobs that locals don’t want to do
Although governments of European countries called for locals to fill the positions left open by Ukrainians who had to return home, citizens don’t rush to labour in these industries.
93% of Ukrainian workers are employed at jobs requiring hard physical labour such as farming, agriculture, construction, food manufacturing and processing, service industry. The reason why workers from Ukraine are able to get such jobs easily is because locals don’t want to work there.
These industries have low prestige and pay little, by the local standards.
Although residents of Ukraine don’t wish to work on farms there, they are eager to get such jobs in Poland, knowing they will be making 600-1,000 Euro monthly (double the average wage they would get at home). Polish citizens, on the other hand, view such wages as low, although they may go to Germany to do such jobs while earning 1,400-2,000 Euro per month, according to Vasily Voskobojnik, president of the Ukrainian association overlooking foreign employment.
Finland, Estonia, and Poland struggle without cheap labour
As the farming season started in Europe, the industry struggled without labourers from Ukraine. Labour migrants are important on jobs like picking strawberries and many others.
Finland started charter flights for workers from Ukraine already in April, even though officially the borders were closed, the seasonal workers were allowed to arrive.
Estonia’s Minister of Interior even called to stop employing foreign workers, pointing out that the country is becoming too dependent on labour migrants. “Apparently, we cannot do anything without Ukrainians. We cannot harvest strawberries, or wield, build,” Mart Helme complained after farmers demanded from him to allow workers from Ukraine to enter the country.
Poland also admitted they won’t be able to father crops without Ukrainian labourers.
Due to a temporary stop in issuing visas, there was even competition to get labourers from Ukraine among employers. At the same time, the lack of labourers didn’t influence much the size of wages. The pay checks offered are about the same.
Wages in Ukraine itself had doubled in the last 5 years. One of the reasons for that, according to local experts, is the competition from foreign jobs.
The average Ukrainian monthly wage in the first quarter of 2020 was 390 Euro.
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