The number of employees at iron & steel enterprises in 2024 decreased by 7%

The number of workers in the industry is declining due to mobilization, external and internal migration

The number of employees at Ukrainian iron & steel enterprises in 2024 will decrease by 7.2% – to 66 thousand people. This was reported to GMK Center by the Federation of Metallurgists of Ukraine (FMU).

“The number of employees at FMU enterprises during 2024 decreased by 7.2%, to 66 thousand people. Decrease in the number of employees was observed at the vast majority of FMU enterprises,” Sergiy Belenkyi, head of FMU, told GMK Center in a commentary.

Under the conditions of war, the number of employees at iron & steel enterprises is decreasing due to mobilization, external migration, departure of specialists from frontline regions, where the industry’s enterprises are mainly located, and other reasons.

The shortage of personnel concerns all working specialities, although depending on the specifics of production, the list of scarce specialities for individual companies will be different. For example, Ferrexpo lacks drivers, electric and gas welders, and repairmen. In its turn, Metinvest lacks people in the following positions: blast furnace mining engineer, coke machine operator, tunneling machine operator, slagging machine operator, caster operator, and others.

Ukrainian iron & steel companies continue to create conditions for personnel training, improvement of knowledge and skills, as well as requalification. Thus, the companies are able to partially cover vacant positions with internal resources, and employees are able to grow within the companies.

For example, in Metinvest, retraining is carried out in almost all working professions, in most cases it is carried out directly at the production site. Last year, 13 thousand employees of Metinvest underwent retraining and advanced training.

The companies of the industry are actively working on attracting young personnel. For example, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih is implementing a number of projects to attract and retain young people at the enterprise, which covered more than 20 thousand students in 2023. These projects included career guidance, career and informal activities, online internships and paid internships for students. Other Ukrainian MMC companies are implementing similar projects.

Ukrainian iron & steel companies, like all sectors of the Ukrainian economy, are experiencing a shortage of personnel. The number of open vacancies at the largest companies is counted in thousands. In particular, Metinvest alone has almost 4000 vacancies in engineering and technical specialties. The company provides an opportunity to retrain, improve qualification, enter Metinvest Polytechnic University on simplified terms.

As GMK Center reported, the number of employees at GMK enterprises decreased to 71.1 thousand people at the end of 2023. In the first year of full-scale aggression, the average number of full-time employees at the enterprises of the association decreased from 126 thousand to 80 thousand people.