Business

Ukrainian IT professionals are closing down sole proprietorships en masse: what new statistics show

A new trend is emerging in the Ukrainian IT sector: since the beginning of the year, more IT entrepreneurs have closed their sole proprietorships than registered new ones. Over the ten months of 2024-2025, the industry lost 7,553 sole proprietorships, which is three times more than last year. This was reported by "Komersant Ukrainian" with reference to data from Opendatabot.

Let’s analyze what’s behind these figures, how the labor market is changing, and why the mass closure of sole proprietorships is not a sign of a crisis.

How many IT sole proprietorships are closing and how many are opening

According to analytics, since the beginning of the year:

• 18,605 new sole proprietorships in the field of computer programming have opened.
• 26,158 entrepreneurs have closed.

The balance is negative by -7,553 individual entrepreneurs.

The rate of closures is growing: during the year, the number of closed businesses was three times higher than in the previous 12 months.

Dynamics of registrations and closures (2024-2025)

The peak of openings was in January, May, October 2024, and August-October 2025.

The peak of closures was in December 2024 (4059) and January 2025 (6912).

In 2025, the pace of closures gradually decreases, but still exceeds openings in most months.

Where is the largest number of new IT entrepreneurs

Top regions by the number of new IT entrepreneurs:

• Kyiv – 3737
• Lviv region – 2015
• Dnipropetrovs’k region – 1740
• Kharkiv region – 1557
• Kyiv region – 1338.

However, only the following regions have a positive balance – when more sole proprietorships opened than closed:

• Volyn: 19
• Ternopil region: 12.

In the rest of the regions, there is a predominance of closures.

Who opens IT sole proprietorships: men or women

Men predominate among new IT entrepreneurs – 57% of registrations, while women account for 43%.

And in no region does the number of female sole proprietors exceed the number of male ones – this is currently an atypical situation for Ukrainian business, which is mostly started by women.

The median “life” of an IT sole proprietorship is 4 years

Based on data on entrepreneurs who closed in 2025:

• The median life span is 4 years.
• Every sixth IT entrepreneur has been operating for less than a year.
• Another third has been operating for 1 to 4 years.

The entrepreneur who closed in 2025 worked the longest: 34 years of experience (since 1991).

Why IT sole proprietorships are closing

However, the closure of sole proprietorships does not necessarily indicate a crisis in the industry, but rather a change in the format of IT employment.

Thus, according to DOU, this year 57% of IT professionals work as freelancers.

Comparatively, a year ago, the number was 70%, and in 2022 it was 87%.

More vacancies than last year

At the same time, according to Gini, the number of vacancies in the IT sector has only increased over the past year.

Thus, while 72,396 job offers for IT professionals were posted in 10 months of last year, the same period this year has already seen an 11% increase in such offers: 80 297.

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