The analysis of challenges and opportunities in local economic development planning highlights the need for a systematic and strategic approach. This approach involves developing a coherent regional master plan for sectoral specialisation and development based on territorial communities’ visions, strategies, programmes, and investment profiles. This requires strengthening local economic development policy in two main areas: adaptive development, involving instruments for timely regulatory intervention, and strategic development, focusing on creating a favorable environment for economic activity with long-term effects. The emphasis is on overcoming formalistic approaches, improving local economic development strategy-making and programming, strengthening incentives for local governments, and engaging local stakeholders in drafting the relevant policy documents. The importance of concentrating communities’ resources on a limited number of strategic priority projects is emphasized. These include capital projects aimed at creating and upgrading physical assets, and process-oriented projects designed to facilitate structural and institutional change. Priority capital projects within local economic development programmes include the development of transport and logistics hubs, industrial clusters, locally integrated structures, and other business activity centers; the establishment of new enterprises and the modernization and expansion of existing enterprises’ production capacity, alongside the development of transport and logistics infrastructure and product distribution systems, particularly for exports and sales to other regions of the country; and support for investment and entrepreneurial projects aimed at establishing enterprises in high-value advanced processing real-sector industries, including through the preparation of territorial investment profiles. Process-oriented projects within local economic development programmes should include measures to harness communities’ existing economic and resource potential; stimulate entrepreneurship and employment, particularly in rural areas; foster intermunicipal economic cooperation; develop smart infrastructure; and improve road and transport infrastructure and road quality. The study substantiates the direct link between territorial communities’ project activities involving effective measures to promote entrepreneurship, employment, and structural economic change and the transformation of the labor market. In turn, achieving strategic and programme objectives through labor market development measures significantly contributes to communities’ socio-economic resilience. However, this positive impact depends on the initiative and active engagement of local governments, their capacity to organize and coordinate activities in line with the community’s development priorities, and their ability to mobilize internal resources and attract external funding and support. Together, these efforts can enhance the socio-economic resilience of territorial communities, thereby strengthening the resilience of regional economies and Ukraine’s economy as a whole. 

local economic development, policy of local economic development, labor market, project activity, territorial community, socio-economic resilience 

The substantiation of the national concept and regional prioritization of unemployment regulation is relevant for Ukraine. Preserving human potential and national security are the problems of unemployment in wartime. Ignoring this problem against the background of a decline in the well-being of the population can lead to an unemployment trap and poverty. Therefore, the issue of long-term, conversion, hidden, and stagnant unemployment in the context of the spread of forced partial, informal, and inadequate employment should be a priority for strengthening the resilience of society and the state. The analysis of the unemployment rate and the number of registered unemployed in Ukraine since February 2022 indicates downward trends (the number of registered unemployed reached its minimum value in December 2024, if analyzed since the 2000s). However, these trends are driven by numerous problems of wartime – demographic losses, mass forced emigration, decline of regional labor markets in frontline regions, mobilization of the population to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, decrease in demand for employment services among the male population. The identified reasons are risk indicators of pseudo-positive trends in the development of the Ukrainian labor market. The article suggests a national concept of unemployment regulation based on the results of the analysis, which involves combining the requirements of European integration and the implementation of proactive tools to support the unemployed through effective employment services. The reduction of unemployment should be achieved by stimulating employment in the areas of economic stability, recovery and growth. The recommendations for the regions include organizing systematic monitoring of regional labor markets; defining proactive tools to support the unemployed according to their needs; determining the size of unemployment benefits depending on the average monthly wage in the region, but taking into account restrictions at the national level; planning structural transformations of employment for the wartime economy, the economy of the «war freeze», the first and subsequent stages of post-war recovery, and a long-term development strategy; forecasting the scale of conversion unemployment depending on the number of mobilized persons; planning re-emigration measures; stimulating community activities in implementing measures to reduce unemployment. Unemployment regulation priorities should be adjusted in accordance with new security challenges, but it is imperative to maintain a regionalization approach. 

unemployment, employment service, proactive tools, unemployment benefits, conversion unemployment