- Labour shortages remain the single most pressing challenge for industrial businesses.
- Rising prices for raw materials and supplies have intensified — 56% — making it the second-largest challenge for companies.
- Dangerous working conditions affected 46% of businesses in April, particularly in frontline regions.
- The problem of electricity disruptions is easing — it has dropped to 6th place in the impediments ranking.
“Labour shortage” not only firmly holds the top spot among the main impediments to doing business in wartime — it sets a new record every month. In April, this problem affected 68% of businesses — a historic high since the launch of the monthly surveys.
These are the findings of the 48th monthly survey conducted by IER among 471 industrial enterprises.
The main impediments to doing business in wartime,
% respondents
In April, there was a slight increase in the difficulty of finding skilled workers — the share of enterprises for which such workers were harder to find rose from 61.4% to 62.3%. Unskilled workers are harder to find for 35.1% of respondents.
There was also a significant drop in the number of enterprises planning to increase employment over a three-month horizon: from 16.6% in March to 2.5% in April.
The number of companies planning layoffs, on the contrary, increased — from 3.9% to 6%. However, almost no companies plan to send employees on forced leave — only 4.1% have such plans, which is three times fewer than in March (12.5%).
The impediment “rising prices for raw materials, supplies and goods” has taken firm hold in second place — the indicator rose from 45% to 56%. A record high for over a year.
“This impediment remains in second place, but with a significantly higher result. We are seeing one of the highest figures — 56%. This obstacle was at the same level in February 2025,” said Yevhen Anhel, Senior Research Fellow at IER.
The top three impediments are rounded out by “dangerous working conditions,” which increased its weight from 42% to 46%. “In winter, 57% of respondents cited this impediment. Given the intensified strikes on energy infrastructure and electricity outages, this was reflected in the relevance of this obstacle. But the situation changed at the start of 2026,” noted Yevhen Anhel.
This problem remains more acute for large businesses — affecting over 60% of large enterprises, compared with over 30% of micro enterprises and around 40% of small ones.
In regional terms, the problem is more acute in frontline industrial regions — over 80% of respondents in Kirovohrad, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts consider dangerous working conditions an impediment to doing business.
The survey recorded a rise to fourth place for the obstacle “declining demand for products/services” — from 25% to 26%.
The relevance of “disruptions to electricity, water or heat supply” continued to decline for the third consecutive month — dropping from fourth to sixth place at 21%.
“The relevance indicator for the ‘electricity disruptions’ impediment has fallen to the level of October 2025, when 19% of businesses mentioned it. By comparison, at the peak of outages in winter 2025, 48% of respondents cited this problem, while in summer 2025 it was only 4–6% of enterprises. Depending on how the situation with outages and strikes on our energy infrastructure develops, we may see changes in the relevance of this impediment,” said Yevhen Anhel.
37% of enterprises were forced to temporarily suspend operations due to electricity disruptions in March. At the same time, 43% of businesses continued to operate without interruption despite electricity disruptions. Only 20% of businesses experienced no electricity outages.
Average working time losses amounted to 5% in March, down from 6% in February. The largest losses were recorded among small enterprises (7%), in the metallurgy and metalworking sector by industry (7%), and in Cherkasy (16%) and Sumy (13%) oblasts by region.
“Corruption” and “unlawful demands or pressure from law enforcement or oversight bodies” traditionally remain minor issues compared to the main obstacles — each cited by 4% of respondents.
Impediments to production growth from the “pre-war” questionnaire (quarterly question for industrial businesses)
Assessments of the government’s economic policy remain predominantly neutral — 60%, as in the previous two months. The share of positive responses has held at 6% for three months. However, the share of negative assessments stands at 29%.
The IER’s monthly New Monthly Enterprises Survey (#NRES) involves up to 500 Ukrainian industrial enterprises located in 21 of Ukraine’s 27 regions. The survey has been conducted on a monthly basis since May 2022.
Video presentation of the April survey results – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgFE8VUvZTg
All previous surveys from July 2022 http://www.ier.com.ua/ua/proekt_dilova_dumka/NRES_Presentations
