The labor market and technology of staff training for the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine

Abstract

Relevance of the research topic. During the year of the war (as of February 2023), due to the full-scale invasion of Russia, the total amount of damage caused to the infrastructure of Ukraine amounted to 143.8 billion dollars. These are more than 150,000 destroyed residential buildings, 25,000 km of state and local roads, 3,170 educational institutions, enterprises of the national economy, medical institutions, infrastructure facilities, etc. This list, unfortunately, can be continued. But everything destroyed after the war will have to be rebuilt. Therefore, education must respond to the changes in the labor market due to the war in the direction of training a sufficient number of personnel who will be involved in reconstruction. Vocational and technical education has powerful opportunities in the context of the assigned tasks, it is it that must respond to current realities and future needs. Formulation of the problem. Vocational (vocational and technical) education is popular abroad, which cannot be observed in Ukraine. The significant advantages of a technical vocational school are the possibility of quickly mastering a profession, retraining, obtaining an additional specialty, etc. Since the beginning of the war, the labor market of Ukraine has undergone significant changes, but the domestic economy has to some extent adapted to the state of war. Under such conditions, labor professions will be most in demand in the near future, as such specialists are necessary for the reconstruction of the country. Therefore, there is a need to conduct research on the prospects for the development of vocational education in order to meet the new requirements of the labor market and the post-war recovery of the country. Analysis of recent research and publications. There is a fairly large number of scientific studies devoted to the current state and prospects for the development of vocational education. But taking into account the state of war and the need for post-war reconstruction of the country, there is a need for additional research in order to solve new tasks and prospects for the further development of the country's economy. Highlighting unexplored parts of the general problem. The issue of managing the process of restoring the country and rebuilding its economy is inextricably linked to the process of reforming the education sector, therefore the search for effective models and mechanisms for the development of the vocational education system in accordance with the requirements of the labor market is necessary today. Setting the task, the goal of the research. The above circumstances determine the expediency of conducting a study of the state and prospects for the development of the vocational education system in Ukraine, taking into account the requirements of the labor market and the needs of Ukraine's post-war recovery. Research method and methodology. In the process of conducting the research, general scientific (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, analytical grouping) and special (abstraction, modeling, etc.) methods of studying economic phenomena and processes were used. Presenting main material. Quantitative indicators of the system of professional and technical education were evaluated. It was established that they cannot be considered optimistic, since the number of institutions, those who study in them and, accordingly, the number of graduates decreased. Analysis of the dynamics of the regional features of the system of vocational education and training showed that the leaders are the Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Kharkiv regions and the city of Kyiv. It was established that the number of education seekers is proportional to the number of applications for state budget entry in all regions of the country. The number of teachers is proportional to the number of students, which indicates the staffing of vocational education institutions in all regions of the country. The analysis of the age characteristics of teachers of Vocational (vocational and technical) education institutions showed that the total number of employees under 30 years old is almost two times less than the number of employees over 60 years old. The dominant majority is made up of employees aged 50 to 60 years. As for the age characteristics of education recipients, the maximum number of recipients is at the age of 17, which is explained by the structure of the education system in Ukraine. At the same time, there are students (students) over the age of 30, which can be explained by the desire to obtain a new (additional) specialty that is competitive on the labor market. And the number of this group of listeners is growing every year. An analysis of the level and dynamics of employment of graduates was carried out. It was established that the vast majority of graduates in 2022 were employed by profession (97.4%), not employed - only 2.5%. Regarding the sectoral structure of employment, the largest number of graduates of Vocational (vocational and technical) education found work in industry (30.7%), the second largest number was in the transport industry (28%) and agriculture (23.4%). The smallest number went to work in the field of communications (0.1%). We determined the Top-50 professions in which the number of unemployed is the largest and the smallest and proved that labor professions are in demand by the labor market even during wartime. According to official data, there were 2.6 million unemployed people in Ukraine at the end of 2022, and 2.8 million at the beginning of 2023. As of today, 45% of the unemployed are people with higher education. Instead, as the analysis showed, there is a lack of representatives of working professions. In the conditions of the need for post-war reconstruction of the country, the need for workers will continue to grow. Conclusions. The conducted analysis showed that there is a need to intensify the reformation process in the vocational education system, since the speed and efficiency of the post-war recovery of the country will depend significantly on the extent to which the needs of the labor market will be met today and in the future in labor professions.