Due to the minimum contributions paid by individual entrepreneurs and the state, pensions in Ukraine remain significantly lower than the salaries published by Ukrstat.
Pensions in Ukraine are calculated based on the average salary, which for 2024 is 17.5 thousand hryvnia. This amount is the Pension Fund's benchmark for calculating pensions and paying the Unified Social Contribution (USC).
This was reported by Lidiya Tkachenko, senior research fellow at the Institute of Demography and Social Research, on air at Kiev24.
“Look, our average salary is somewhere around the same as the one that the Pension Fund uses to calculate new pensions and from which the unified social tax is paid. So the average salary for 2024 was 17.5 thousand. Across Ukraine, right? Yes, across Ukraine on average,” she said.
The average salary for pension accruals is lower than in statistical data due to the minimum contributions paid by sole proprietors and the state.
“This takes into account the minimum contributions paid by sole proprietors, as well as the minimum contributions paid by the state for certain categories of the population. Therefore, this indicator is lower than the indicator of salaries of full-time employees, which is published by our Ukrstat. There, the average salary is more than 20 thousand, well, about 22 thousand,” Tkachenko said.
According to her, the average pension, even taking into account indexation, will be 6,300 hryvnia, which is less than 30% of the average salary. This is taking into account inflation and how the salary will be adjusted for calculating pensions.
Let us recall that in Ukraine in March 2025 the next indexation of pensions will be held. From March 1, pensioners will receive a recalculation of their payments, which will allow them to receive several hundred, and sometimes even more than a thousand hryvnia more.