Labour market insecurity has worsened drastically, as the Programme's surveys and related work have demonstrated. Total employment shrunk by about one-third between 1990 and 1999, with employment in agriculture and in industry falling by over 40%, while 'services' have expanded by about 15%. Ukraine is perhaps the only country in the world where there are more women in employment than men. A sad reason for this is that male life expectancy fell so sharply in the 1990s that women comprise a majority of the population, particularly among middle and upper-age brackets. However, the female labour force participation rate is remarkably high (63.4%, compared with 73.3% for men, aged 16-64), a legacy of the Soviet era.

Unemployment has long been largely concealed in the form of "administrative leave". But it has risen from insignificant levels in the early and mid 1990s to over 12% now. Women's unemployment rate (11.6%) has been slightly lower than men's, even though women have comprised 62% of all the unemployed who have registered with public employment exchanges. The youth (16-24) unemployment rate is 13.1%, possibly reflecting the fact that young relatively educated workers have relatively good opportunities. The number of long-term unemployed has multiplied almost tenfold in the last five years of the decade, in which time the median duration of unemployment rose from about six months to eleven months.

Still more striking than the unemployment figures is the fact that nearly as many workers were on administrative leave - 2,633,100. If you regard them as unemployed, the total unemployment rate would be 23.8%. This is probably a more realistic figure than the standard unemployment rate. If you added the number reporting themselves as "discouraged", that is, outside the labour force but wanting and available for jobs, then the figure would be 26.2%. We would like to convert the data into a full-time equivalent estimate of labour underutilization, but the data are not yet available for this. The estimate will be given later. Harder to take into account are those who have been taken out of the labour force by imprisonment, since it is known that the unemployed and marginalized workers have comprised a high proportion of those convicted for petty crimes. The number of people in prison almost doubled in the 1990s, rising to about 216,000 at the end of the decade, of whom 93.5% were men.

Although the SES Programme has analysed changes in employment security through its Enterprise Labour Flexibility and Security Surveys (ELFS), there are no national statistics on the extent of flexible, precarious forms of employment. We are encouraging the national Statistical Office to collect such data. Employment turnover has remained high, particularly for men. What is more interesting is that in less than a decade the country has been transformed from one in which almost all employment was concentrated in large-scale establishments to one in which a majority is in firms with fewer than ten workers. As for formal protection, regulations do stipulate that workers made redundant must receive two months of advance notice, a regulation that covers part-time and young workers as well as others. Severance pay is supposed to be provided for at least two weeks.

In terms of job security, legislation bans employment and pay discrimination against women, or on grounds of race, religion and disability. This supposedly covers recruitment, wages and promotion. There are also professional bodies and unions to protect workers in employment matters. There is no law banning employment discrimination against workers with HIV/AIDS.

Women have strong maternity leave rights by international standards. They are guaranteed maternity leave if they have been employed for a month or more, and this leave can be taken for 156 weeks (three years). Women have the right, legally, to return to the same job after their maternity leave. There is also guaranteed parental leave, for both parents.

In terms of skill development, or skill reproduction security, the situation is complicated. There is virtually complete literacy, and 93% of the population aged 25 and over have completed secondary schooling. The median number of years of schooling is 12, school is compulsory until age 17, nearly 80% of secondary school graduates go on to post-secondary schooling, and a growing proportion of those in tertiary education are doing science and technology subjects (40%). These figures are all impressive. This is where the difficulty of interpretation starts. The official statistics classify people as skilled or not according to level of formal schooling, and by that token about 85% of workers were skilled in 1999. But statistics on training in work skills may be telling a different story. For a start, apprenticeships have declined sharply, by nearly 50% between 1995 and 1999. And, although the number attending colleges and universities rose by 8.4%, the numbers graduating from vocational and educational training fell by 30% between 1990 and 1999.

As an index of quality of modern teaching, we are using the ratio of personal computers per pupil in secondary school. In 1990, there were 162 pupils for every PC; in 1999, 72 children had to share each PC. This is scarcely adequate, and indicates the difficulty of maintaining the quality of schooling in this period of economic stress.

Work security trends are also hard to unravel. The daily absenteeism rate is remarkably high, at 20%, although it is slightly down on the 1990 level (21.7%). The occupational injury rate (number of work-related injuries per 1000 workers) has also declined, by more than 50% since 1990. This reflects the massive decline in industrial production and the slump in mining. The number of working days lost has also declined, albeit by less, from 140.7 to 87.4 days per 1000 working days. Deaths due to work-related accidents have also declined. One source of concern is that the number of labour inspectors in the country is very low, merely 117 operating in 1999.

The number of registered disabled is relatively high, but there is a law providing disability benefits, paid from enterprise contributions.

Working time legislation is still quite protective. There are 12 public holidays a year, and regular wage workers are entitled to 24 days of paid leave a year. The pensionable age has remained 60 for men and 55 for women, although pension entitlements have been eroded. It now takes 25 years of contributory years for a man and 20 years for a woman to gain eligibility to a state pension. And the mean pension is low (69 UAH in 1999).

Representation security is surely much weaker than the official statistics suggest. The official unionization rate is misleading, and there is no doubt whatsoever that union membership has slumped in the 1990s, although the figures given by the National Federation of Union remain very high. The law allows any type of union, although sectoral unions are the main type. Two figures need further investigation. There has been an increase in the number of national unions, from 42 in 1990 to 72 in 1999, according to the Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for registering unions. And it is reported that the share of workers covered by collective agreements rose in the second half of the 1990s.

Formally, there is a national tripartite body, known as the National Social Partnership Council, located in the President's 'office' and consisting of 66 members, 22 from government, unions and employers. There is also a tripartite Steering Committee on Employment and a Committee on Labour Safety.

As for outcomes, there seems to have been an increase in strikes between 1990 and 1999, with 327 strikes in the latter year. Strikes are banned in 'essential' public services.

Income security has scarcely existed for the vast majority of the population at any time in the country's independent existence. Although there is no official poverty line, a legal "low-income line" norm was introduced in 1999, and by that modest norm 37% of the population were deemed to be in poverty. A guide to average living standards is the average wage, which at the end of the decade was about $40 a month. There is a national minimum wage, which in 1999 was 41% of the average wage, which was much less than required for basic subsistence needs. It has been estimated that about 15% of the employed were receiving less than the minimum wage.

Official income statistics suggest that income inequality remains very low by international standards, with a gini of 0.28 for personal income distribution. However, there are reasons for thinking that this is an underestimate. And several forms of redistribution have occurred. The gender wage differentials seem to have widened, and labour's share of GDP has declined, from 53% in 1990 to 46% in 1999, according to the Annual Statistical Bulletin of Ukraine.

In terms of state transfers, it is estimated that government expenditure on social protection accounts for 5.9% of GDP., and that 76% of the economically active are covered by national social insurance, which is down on the estimated level of 90% for 1990. Non-wage costs continue to be large, and apparently are greater than wage costs in terms of the share of production costs.

Unemployment benefits have existed for some years. According to official data, 52.8% of the unemployed receive such benefits. In principle, an unemployed person is entitled to benefits for up to a year. To receive a benefit, the person must register at an employment office, and cannot refuse more than two job offers deemed 'suitable' by the employment office. They may also receive family benefits and housing allowances. Beyond the unemployment insurance benefits, there is a means-tested unemployment assistance scheme.

More generally, there is a means-tested minimum income scheme for low-income families. In practice, this is complex, since it consists of eleven types of benefit, each of which involves different entitlement conditions. Local experts estimate that 80% of those entitled to social assistance actually receive them. This figure should be interpreted with considerable reservation, and is probably much too high.