Tip of the Unemployment Iceberg

In the period from January to October 1999, the number of the unemployed in Ukraine increased 1.3 times over the same period of last year, and reached 1,852,900, i.e., 4.14% of this country’s total population capable of working, UNIAN was told by the State Employment Center at the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies.

The highest (in terms of official statistics) level of unemployment — 6.44% to 7.47% — was recorded in Ivano-Frankivsk, Sumy, Rivne, Volyn, Zhytomyr, Lviv, and Chernihiv oblasts. Here is the surprising, if contradictory, proof of the amazing times in which we live. Consider the paradox: according to the government production is steadily rising (which ought to increase the number of people engaged in this production), and so is unemployment.

Director of the Ukrainian Institute of Sociological Research Oleksandr Yaremenko thinks that the situation on Ukraine’s labor market “is not yet critical but still very complicated.” The reasons for this, in his opinion, lie in the fact that most domestic enterprises are on their knees, while there are no real opportunities for the development of small and medium business which could offer countless jobs. Institute experts estimate that about 20% of the able- bodied population are ready to enter business if the state undertook specific steps to ensure the development of small and medium enterprises. Mr. Yaremenko is convinced that people with initiative could set up, if given a chance, about 150,000 enterprises of this kind. If the government denies them this chance and fails to legalize shadow business (not to be confused with criminal-capital firms), unemployment is bound to grow in the next few years.

One should also not forget that to claim the official data confirm to reality is to stretch the point. The level of hidden unemployment, when a person does not work de facto at the enterprise where he is registered de jure, is not diminishing at all. Mr. Yaremenko believes that if the Ministry of Labor used International Labor Organization methods, Ukraine would show 7- 8% joblessness. The only thing that can be called positive, with a certain measure of sarcasm, according to Candidate of Sciences Yaremenko, is the fact that official organizations, by force of the ever-increasing unemployment, have to submit annual employment figures closer to reality. Well, every cloud has a silver lining, but this will hardly comfort our compatriots registered at the labor exchange, Ukraine’s unemployment office.