In 2024, the share of newcomers among specialists in the Ukrainian IT industry dropped to a record low level — only 24%. This is the lowest indicator in the last ten years. At the same time, for data DOU, the number of professionals considering emigration, increased to 15%.
In the period from 2017 to 2019, specialists with up to two years of experience made up almost half of the total number of IT workers in Ukraine, and every year the number of new personnel grew by 20-22%. The pandemic in 2020 caused a short-term decline in the number of newcomers, but already in 2021 this indicator recovered to 39%. However, with the onset of full-scale war, the number of entry-level jobs began to dwindle. By 2024, the share of newcomers had fallen to an all-time low.
Currently, 76% of IT professionals have more than two years of experience, highlighting the gradual aging of the market.
Age of specialists in IT: trends
Although the IT industry remains young, the median age of professionals has been increasing over the years. If in 2015 half of the people of Haiti were under 26 years of age, ten years later the median age increased to 30 years. Data Science and Data Engineering specialists are traditionally the youngest, with a median age of 28 years, compared to 25 years in 2015. Customer Success specialists have a similar age.
The oldest IT workers are top tech professionals, such as CTOs and CIOs, with a median age of 35. DevOps, SRE, and project management professionals have also gotten older, with their median age rising to 32, up from 28 in 2015.
Regional migration of Haitians and their plans for emigration
Before the start of the full-scale invasion, 70% of Aitivians lived in Kyiv, Lviv and Kharkiv. The war radically changed the geographical distribution. Kharkiv, which has suffered significant losses due to the fighting, has lost most of its IT professionals, with only 4% of specialists currently working in the city, compared to 14% in 2021. Instead, Kyiv and Lviv became the key centers of the industry: 42% of Aitivians live in Kyiv, although this is slightly less than before the war, when the figure was 45%.
Lviv has also become an attractive place for citizens of Aitiv, especially for those who left Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro and Odesa. The share of Aitivites in Lviv increased to 21% in 2022 and remains at the level of 18% in 2023-2024.
After the start of the war, some IT specialists moved to the western regions, in particular to Ivano-Frankivsk, where the share of IT specialists increased to 5% in 2022 and stabilized at the level of 3% in the following years. In addition, in the smaller cities of the western region, the share of Aitivites increased from 4% to 8% compared to the pre-war period.
As for emigration, the share of Haitians who emigrated after 2022 but plan to return fell to 4% in 2024 (compared to 8-9% in 2022-2023). This is partly explained by the return of 8% of those who left because of the war. Other specialists decided to stay abroad.
Before the war, the people of Haiti were divided into those who did not plan to emigrate (45%) and those who thought about moving, but did not take active steps. From 2016 to 2021, the share of those actively preparing for emigration decreased from 9% to 7%. However, after the invasion in 2022, the share of those willing to leave increased to 13%, although the number of those who decided to stay in Ukraine increased at the same time (56%).
