Intergenerational Occupational Inheritance in Ukraine: Do Children Want to Follow in Their Parents’ Footsteps?

Amid a full-scale war and the demands of Ukraine’s future reconstruction, the issue of youth career guidance is of critical importance. The economy requires a large number of workers, particularly in manufacturing, construction, logistics, and other sectors that will provide for the country’s recovery. As of February 2025, 75% of enterprises reported labor shortages.

The data from the State Employment Service show that the most acute labor shortages are observed in skilled manual occupations, such as locksmiths, electricians, and machine-tool operators. However, these specialties remain unpopular among young people. The defense industry and the Armed Forces also require large numbers of workers, particularly young people. This concerns not only military service per se, but also the prestige of military education, which could supply the system with young, highly qualified personnel. However, only 75 children (1.5%) among those surveyed are considering a military specialty. These figures are critically low for a country that has no foreseeable prospects for ending a full-scale war against a powerful adversary.

At the initiative of the Olena Zelenska Foundation, the KSE Institute, in cooperation with the humanitarian organization People in Need and with the financial support of the Czech people, conducted a large-scale study titled Future Index: Professional Expectations and Development of Adolescents in Ukraine.

In this article, we analyze intergenerational occupational inheritance—how closely the career expectations of Ukrainian adolescents align with their parents’ occupations, whether this relationship varies by region of residence or social group, and what public policy implications could be in the areas of education and career guidance.

Methodology

The survey of adolescents and their parents or guardians was conducted in March 2025 using a mixed CATI–CAWI methodology. First, mobile phone numbers were randomly selected for telephone interviews with adults (18+) who had children aged 13–16 enrolled in secondary education institutions in Ukraine. After eligibility was confirmed and parental or guardian consent was obtained, teenagers were sent a link to complete the questionnaire.

The study sample comprised 5,089 school students from across Ukraine (excluding occupied territories) and 5,089 parents or guardians. Parents were asked about their current occupation, while adolescents were asked about the occupation they would like to pursue in the future. Both parents/guardians and children were asked open-ended questions, with responses coded using the GPT-4.1 Mini LLM and subsequently reviewed by the research team. For teens, the question followed the standard format used by the OECD in PISA studies: “Describe the job you expect to have in your 30s.” In cases where a child’s response was unclear or the child declined to answer, the response was not included in the alignment analysis.

Categories of parents not participating in the labor force were excluded from the analysis, including homemakers, the unemployed, students, and retirees, as well as responses such as “hard to say” or “don’t know.” Thus we focused on families that are active in the labor market and have clearly defined occupational trajectories. Children who had not yet decided on a future occupation were also excluded from the subsequent analysis.

Taking this into account, the final sample included 2,492 respondents—1,246 children and the same number of parents or guardians. Since only one parent or guardian was surveyed per household, the indicators of occupational alignment reflect only partial alignment for children living in households with more than one adult.

For the analysis of occupational alignment, we used two classification systems separately:

• International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO)—an international standard for classifying occupations that enables comparison of results across countries. The system comprises 10 major groups: managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals, office support staff, service and sales workers, skilled agricultural workers, craft and related trades workers, plant and machine operators and assemblers, elementary occupations, and armed forces occupations.
• Unified Vacancy Portal (UVP) of the State Employment Service—a sector-based economic classification used to align respondents’ answers with Ukrainian labor market data.

Occupational alignment is categorized into three groups based on the responses of children and their parents/guardians:

• Full alignment—when one parent’s occupation exactly matches the occupation chosen by the child.
• Partial alignment—when a child selected multiple occupations (two or more), and at least one of them matches the parent’s occupation.
• No alignment—when the occupation expected by the child differs from the parent’s occupation. This may indicate interests that differ from those of the parents and the child’s individual choice.

Results

An analysis of adolescents’ career decision status by parents’ occupational qualification (ISCO) demonstrates a high level of uncertainty: in most groups, the share of children without clear expectations exceeds 60%. At the same time, there is noticeable differentiation depending on the nature of work. Children whose parents are employed in positions requiring higher qualifications or involving administrative functions (clerical workers, managers, entrepreneurs) are more likely to have articulated career plans (35–38%). By contrast, among children whose parents are engaged in manual labor and low-skilled tasks (equipment operators, agricultural workers), as well as among children of the unemployed, the level of certainty falls to 20–22%, which may indicate the influence of a family’s socio-economic status on a child’s ability to envision their occupational future.

A breakdown of the data by economic sectors using the Unified Vacancy Portal (UVP) reveals substantially greater variability in outcomes than the ISCO-based classification, as ISCO categories are cross-sectoral and therefore broader than those used in the UVP. The highest levels of career certainty are observed among children whose parents work in dynamic service sectors, such as marketing and advertising (56%), tourism (50%), and IT (40%). This is likely explained by greater awareness of contemporary market trends within the family. Traditional infrastructure and resource-based sectors—energy, agribusiness, and communications—are characterized by the lowest levels of certainty (17–22%), underscoring questions about the attractiveness and comprehensibility of these fields for children.

The comparison of parents’ or guardians’ occupations and children’s career expectations was conducted only for respondents who provided sufficiently detailed answers to allow classification under the ISCO and UVP systems. Descriptions of future work such as “stable, well-paid, desirable,” “work that brings material benefit and satisfaction,” or “hard to say” were classified as undefined. Overall, 31% of children were able to name a specific career trajectory.

Among parents, the most frequently represented ISCO categories are professionals (such as teachers, doctors, and engineers) and service and sales workers. Children, by contrast, show a pronounced aspiration toward higher-skilled occupations—professionals and managers. This reveals a natural demand for upward social mobility. In children’s open-ended responses, including those who were unable to provide a specific answer, a decent level of pay was frequently mentioned, suggesting that children associate professional and managerial occupations with better financial outcomes.

When the occupational structure is viewed through the lens of economic sectors using the UVP sectoral classification, the picture becomes even more pronounced. Parents most often work in sectors related to education, industry, and various types of office-based employment. Children, by contrast, gravitate toward IT, creative industries, and business—that is, sectors associated with high earnings and prestige. At the same time, industry and agriculture—sectors critical to the country’s reconstruction—remain less popular among children.

Under the ISCO classification, only 26% of adolescents have career expectations that fully align with their parents’ occupations (Figure 3). Another 4% demonstrate partial alignment, considering several occupational options, one of which matches the parent’s occupation. The majority—70%—choose a single, specific occupation that differs entirely from that of their parents.

The analysis based on the UVP sectoral structure reveals a similar, yet significantly lower, level of alignment (Figure 3). Only 4% of adolescents are fully aligned, 2% are partially aligned, and 94% clearly choose a different occupation.

This substantial difference arises because a large number of occupations exist across multiple sectors while sharing the same ISCO code. For example, a child might say, “I want to be an accountant, like my mother.” If the mother works as an accountant at an agricultural enterprise, the UVP sector would be classified as agriculture, whereas if she works at a bank, it would be classified as finance. In addition, skills-based coding was conducted using the ISCO-08 Major Groups. There are only 10 such groups, and they are very broad (for example, “Professionals” or “Service and Sales Workers”), which makes assignment to one of the 10 categories statistically more likely.

There is also a possibility that intergenerational mobility (or the lack thereof) in Ukraine is more closely linked to the type of human capital (education and skills) than to specific economic sectors, as children may be more inclined to seek to inherit their parents’ social status rather than their exact place of work. This issue requires further research.

Occupational inheritance across sectors

The level of occupational inheritance varies substantially across different occupational groups (Figure 4). Some occupations demonstrate high alignment, while others show practically no alignment.

The highest level of alignment (full and partial combined) is observed among professionals (74%). These are occupations that typically require prolonged education and generally offer higher average wages than other categories. Other occupational groups that demonstrate at least partial alignment include service workers (19%), technical clerks (18%), entrepreneurs (10%), and managers (3%). Among military occupations, the level of alignment is 13%. By contrast, elementary occupations and agricultural workers show the lowest levels of alignment, as children of parents in these occupations overwhelmingly aspire to upward mobility. In addition, the professionals category encompasses a wide range of economic sectors (including specialists in engineering and technical sciences, healthcare, education, IT, law, social sciences, and culture); therefore, the high level of alignment here more likely reflects children’s aspirations to obtain higher education and higher salary associated with this ISCO category. This is supported by the fact that teens often named “decent income” in their open-ended responses.

By economic sector, the pattern is as follows: the highest alignment between children’s expectations and their parents’ occupations is observed in culture and recreation (26%), law (23%), beauty and health (15%), and in medical professions, design, the defense sector, and education (13% each).

Parents’ education and children’s career trajectories

Parents’ education level is an important factor shaping children’s outcomes and may have a substantial influence on their career expectations. In families where one parent or guardian (the one who completed the questionnaire; information on the education level of other adults in the household is not available) reported having higher education, children exhibit a higher level of career certainty (37%) than in families where the adult respondent does not have higher education (only 9% of children have decided on their careers).

In families where one parent or guardian does not have higher education, only 14% of children partially or fully expect to have a similar type of occupation under the ISCO classification. In families where one parent or guardian has higher education, the corresponding figure is substantially higher—39% of children expect to have the same type of occupation as their parents by the age of 30 (Figure 5).

The analysis based on the UVP classification shows that, unlike occupation type, parents’ level of education does not have a significant impact on children’s expectations: in both cases, the overwhelming majority of children envision themselves working in other sectors of the economy by the age of 30. A similar pattern is observed with parents’ income level, as there are no substantial differences between families with different income levels. The region of residence does not play a significant role either.

Conclusions and recommendations

The analysis of parents’ or guardians’ occupations and children’s expectations regarding their future occupations in Ukraine reveals a complex picture that combines aspirations for social mobility with constraints shaped by educational conditions. Ukrainian adolescents demonstrate a relatively low level of occupational inheritance, with only 26% (under ISCO) and 4% (under the UVP) planning to follow in their parents’ footsteps. This points to high ambitions and a desire for change. At the same time, the expectations of children aged 13–16 do not align with labor market needs, which may pose serious challenges for the labor market in the future.

The situation is particularly alarming in blue-collar occupations and the industrial sector. Children of workers in these fields overwhelmingly reject continuing their parents’ line of work, instead opting for careers in IT or the creative industries. This creates a dangerous imbalance: according to estimates by the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine, reconstruction will require millions of workers. Yet young people do not view these occupations as desirable, which is likely to intensify the challenge of attracting labor migrants. The following steps could help shape children’s understanding of their professional future:

1. Reform of vocational and technical education: The vocational education and training (VET) system must become a prestigious alternative to higher education, contributing to the destigmatization of blue-collar occupations. A 2024 KSE study, conducted with employer participation, confirms that Ukraine faces strong demand for technical specialists. Without adequately supplying the labor market with workers in these occupations, the problem will only intensify.
2. Systematic career guidance from an early age: Career guidance cannot be limited to the final years of schooling—it must be continuous and cover all stages of education, starting from primary school.
3. A national institute of career counseling: This would involve a system for training and certifying career counselors who would work in schools and in cooperation with employment centers.
4. Revision of state-funded enrollment: Financing should be reallocated from the humanities to technical and blue-collar occupations.

Today, labor shortages in blue-collar occupations have driven wage increases of more than 40% for certain categories of workers. Since 2024, these wages have exceeded the average level recorded by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, particularly in industry and in blue-collar occupations. If these trends persist, the need for labor migrants will continue to intensify.

This analysis includes responses from only 24% of the children who participated in the survey. A total of 69% of children have not yet decided what they see themselves becoming in the future. Accordingly, there is substantial scope for career guidance oriented toward the needs that will exist in Ukraine in the years when these children enter the workforce.