№ 2/2012

Forecasting the labor market is a necessary precondition to form a national development strategy and elaborate measures for the employment policy. Based of the priority character of human develop-ment, forecasting the labor market is guided by the priority of labor supply, rather than the demand for it. That is, the number and composition of the active persons is projected, which may be considered a task for the economy to create the necessary number of jobs of the correspondent quality.
Due to the reduction of the population number and rapid changes in its age structure, forecasting labor supply in Ukraine should be based on the demographic forecast. Assumptions as to the pro-spective dynamics of the level of economic activeness and unemployment rate by gender/age groups should be formed using the expert assessment method, and with due regard of the latest macroeco-nomic trends and planned reforms, in particular, raising the retirement age.
The main medium-term risks are the threat of the second wave of the global recession and political instability, which can lead to canceling the measures of the pension reform and absence of structural reforms in the economy. There are also demographic risks, first of all, a reverse of the recent positive tendency to the reduction of premature mortality, which may speed up the decrease of the working-age population.

Keywords:labour market, economically active population, labor supply, employment, unemployment, depopulation, pension reform, forecast