IT Remains Ukraine’s Biggest Service Export in 2023 – USAID Funded Report

Ukraine’s information technology (IT) industry remained the country’s highest service export in 2023 while registering a reduction in overall percentage terms, according to a report released by the Lviv IT Cluster.

According to the report, IT services represented 41.5 percent of the nation’s total exports and contributed 4.9 percent to its total gross domestic product (GDP) at $8 billion this year, compared to last year’s 45.5 percent.

This year also registered an increase in the monthly median salary among IT specialists at $2,630 this year, which is $270 more than in 2022. The figure is significantly higher than the average Ukrainian monthly salary of Hr.18,500 ($500) as listed on the  Work.ua recruitment site.

The number of IT workers also increased by almost 8 percent to 307,600, with 242,000 located in Ukraine partly due to the attractive salaries.

“Technology continues to be one of the key industry in the Ukrainian economy. After all, it provides a significant amount of foreign currency income,” said Lviv IT Cluster CEO Stepan Veselovskyi.

The research, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, collected data from more than 400 IT companies in Ukraine with more than 70,000 respondents.

The report also included statistics that illustrate how Ukraine’s IT industry coped with the war.

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Close to 92 percent of companies interviewed also said they “financially support the implementation of wartime projects,” with three-quarters of those interviewed claiming they have employees who are serving in the military, but generally less than 5 percent of the total number of employees in each company.

Among those being interviewed, 36 percent of Ukrainian technology companies plan to open new offices in 2024, of which 28 percent planned to open representative offices abroad; with Poland being the most popular location.

Ukraine, as one of Eastern Europe’s main technology hubs, has given birth to multiple startups that have since grown globally such as Preply and Grammarly. It is also home to dozens of international software development companies such as Softserve and Luxoft.