A new study published by the World Bank, Labor Demand for Digital Skills in Post-2022 Ukraine: Evidence from Online Job Vacancy Data, draws on Jooble data from millions of online job postings to examine how demand for digital skills in Ukraine has changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The analysis, covering the period from 2021 to 2025, found that the share of digital skills within employers’ overall skill requirements nearly doubled — from 6.74% to 13.09%.
Jooble provided data from millions of job vacancies posted in Ukraine between January 2021 and June 2025. Using large language models, the study’s authors — Britta Rude, Economist, World Bank, and Yurii Kleban, Senior Lecturer at the National University of Ostroh Academy — analyzed the vacancy texts, identified occupations and their associated skill requirements, and mapped the results to ESCO, the European classification of skills, competences, qualifications, and occupations.To examine the relationship between the war and changes in employer requirements, the vacancy data were combined with high-frequency ACLED data on invasion-related events. The analysis also accounted for seasonal patterns, broader labor market trends, disruptions to the energy supply, the launch of ChatGPT, and the subsequent development of large language models. The researchers tested the robustness of their findings using several time-series models.
1. Demand for Digital Skills Nearly Doubled
The share of digital skills within employers’ overall skill requirements rose from 6.74% before the full-scale invasion to 13.09% after February 2022. The researchers also identified a robust positive association between the intensity of invasion-related events and the digital content of job vacancies. This finding remained stable after accounting for other factors, including the development of generative AI and disruptions to Ukraine’s energy system.
Approximately 48% of the overall increase in digital skill demand occurred within existing occupational categories. In other words, employers were not simply hiring more people for technology-focused positions — established roles and the skills required to perform them were themselves becoming more digital. The remaining 52% was associated with a shift in the composition of labor demand toward occupations that inherently require greater use of digital tools.
The study identifies the expansion of remote work as one of the main channels linking wartime disruption to increased demand for digital skills. Faced with security risks, infrastructure damage, and barriers to on-site work, employers increasingly adopted remote working arrangements. These arrangements, in turn, require employees to have stronger digital capabilities.
The rising share of digital skills does not necessarily indicate an absolute increase in the number of digitally intensive vacancies. Ukraine’s overall vacancy volume declined significantly following the full-scale invasion, but digital hiring contracted less sharply than the labor market as a whole. This suggests that vacancies with a stronger digital component were relatively more resilient to the disruption caused by the war.
The findings indicate that the digital transformation of Ukraine’s labor market extends far beyond the IT sector. Digital tools are becoming an increasingly important part of jobs across a wide range of occupations and industries.This has direct implications for the development of education programs and employment policies. The study also highlights the importance of investing in reliable connectivity, an uninterrupted electricity supply, and cloud-based infrastructure. These are not only prerequisites for post-war recovery but also practical tools for sustaining employment while hostilities continue.
“Reskilling programs should prioritize foundational digital capabilities that are relevant and accessible to a broad range of workers, rather than focusing exclusively on highly specialized technical training. Ensuring access to this training is particularly important for internally displaced people, those who have lost their jobs because of the war, lower-income workers, and other vulnerable groups.”
Britta Rude, Economist, World Bank.
Jooble is a data-driven company with 20 years of experience working with large-scale labor market datasets across dozens of countries. We see the value of this data extending beyond the development of our own products to broader initiatives that serve the public interest. We are therefore open to collaborating with international organizations, public institutions, and researchers so that Jooble’s labor market insights can help shape and improve employment and reskilling programs, as well as support evidence-based decisions about labor market development around the world.”
Dmytro Gryn, CEO Jooble.
Jooble is an international job search platform operating in 66 countries. Founded in 2006, Jooble brings together job opportunities from more than 140,000 sources, with 300,000 new vacancies added every day. Up to one million people use Jooble daily to search for their next opportunity. Jooble aims to make the job search simple, safe, and fast while helping employers connect with relevant candidates.
The World Bank is an international development institution that provides financing, policy advice, research, analysis, and technical assistance to help countries address complex development challenges. Its mission is to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet.The research was supported by the World Bank’s SPIRIT program – the Social Protection for Inclusion, Resilience, Innovation, and Transformation Technical Assistance Program – which delivers integrated, multi-sector support to advance social protection and employment reforms, and the Ukraine Relief, Recovery, Reconstruction, and Reform Trust Fund (URTF), a multi-donor fund established by the World Bank to help sustain Ukraine’s administrative and service delivery capacity and support its recovery and reform agenda.