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the employment of the population for us, according to the state statistics, occurred for the first time since 2013," he told a news conference in Kyiv cited by Interfax. That is an increase of 149,000 more people in work and brings the over all unemployment rate down slightly to 9.7% as of August 1. At the same time Yaroshenko said that a fifth (21.8%) of Ukrainians work in the grey economy, which is down slightly from a year earlier when 22.3% of workers were in the grey economy. However, the country is still suffering from a labour crisis. "We have 304,000 people registered with the State Employment Service today," Yaroshenko said. According to him, 47% of them have higher education, and in the cities of Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy and Lviv in employment centres from 85% to 90% of the unemployed people have higher education. "As of July 27, compared with the same date in 2017, the number of unemployment assistance recipients in the country is 23,000, which is 8% less than it was in 2017," he said. The average amount of assistance payments is growing. Minimum assistance under the law is UAH544 ($20.23) per month, which is received by a quarter of the unemployed. The maximum support is UAH7,048 ($262.24) which is received by 5% of the unemployed. As the economy starts to recover the number of new jobs is rising again, according to Yaroshenko, who said there are c.130,000 vacancies in service’s database. Jobs in highest demand include locksmiths, electric welders, turners, bakers, drivers, salesmen, cooks, waiters, nurses, tractor drivers and agricultural machinery servicemen.
4.4.2 Nominal wages dynamics
Real wages in Ukraine grew 14.7% y/y in July , accelerating from 13.0% y/y growth in June, the State Statistics Service reported on Aug 28. The average monthly nominal wage increased to UAH9,170 a month ($347) from UAH9,141 in July, which is 1.0% m/m growth in real terms. The leading regions for average monthly wages remained the city of Kyiv (UAH13,836), the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region (UAH9,764) and the Kyiv region (UAH9,410). T he largest nominal average wage growth was in real estate services (45% y/y), public services and defense (42%) and administrative personnel (32%). Within the industrial sector, the highest nominal wages were
22 UKRAINE Country Report September 2018 www.intellinews.com