Mykolaiv region is among the outsiders in courts on employment of people with disabilities

In Mykolaiv region, since the beginning of 2022, courts have issued only 25 decisions in cases of non-employment of people with disabilities, which is one of the lowest rates among Ukrainian regions. At the same time, open statistics for Odesa and Kherson regions lack up-to-date data or are incomplete due to the war and limited access to some court information.

This is evidenced by the data from the monitoring service Opendatabot.

Mykolaiv region is among the regions with the lowest number of court decisions in cases of non-employment of people with disabilities. Since the beginning of 2022, the region's courts have issued only 25 such decisions, one of the lowest rates in the country.

Overall, since the beginning of 2022, Ukrainian courts have issued 1,992 decisions on non-compliance with the standard for the employment of people with disabilities.

The statistics are almost equally split: in 995 cases, the courts supported the Social Protection Fund for Persons with Disabilities and ordered companies to pay fines, while in 997 cases, businesses managed to defend their position. The total amount of penalties exceeded UAH 109.5 million, while the amount of dismissed claims amounted to almost UAH 286.5 million.

SCREEN SHOT: opendatabot.ua

On the map of court decisions, Mykolaiv region has one of the lowest rates - 25 cases in more than four years. Only Zakarpattia region has fewer - 8 decisions, and Donetsk region - 2. For comparison, Kharkiv region is the leader with 560 court decisions, which is more than 28% of all cases in Ukraine.

Other regions with a large number of such disputes include Cherkasy (145 decisions), Kyiv (144), Chernihiv (140), and Dnipro (137).

The largest number of court decisions was made in 2023 - 733. In 2024, the number of such cases was 559, and in 2025 - 452. In the first months of 2026, another 85 decisions have already been made.

Almost half of all refusals to impose fines were due to the fact that employers proved that they had created vacancies and taken measures to employ people with disabilities. In almost a third of cases, the courts found that a person with a disability had already been officially employed.

It is worth noting that since 2026, Ukraine has changed the mechanism of liability for failure to meet the standard for the employment of people with disabilities. Instead of classic fines, a contribution to support the employment of people with disabilities is now in place.

According to the law, employers with 8 to 25 employees must employ at least one person with a disability. For companies with more than 25 employees, the standard is at least 4% of the staff.

Also in May, Opendatabot updated its annual ranking of Ukraine's largest employers in each region, analyzing financial statements of Ukrainian companies. According to the platform' s analysts, in 10 regions of Ukraine, including Odesa and Mykolaiv, the largest employers are companies that supply the country with electricity.

Анна Бальчінос