According to figures from the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA), as of this week, there are 33,412 war refugees from Ukraine in Estonia under temporary protection.

Martin Raid, a spokesperson for the PPA, said that as of July 21, 3,000 applications for temporary protection have been submitted this year. Applying for temporary protection is not mandatory, however, as all Ukrainian citizens have the right to stay in Estonia even without seeking it.

Currently, there are around 20,000 working-age Ukrainians in Estonia. In the first quarter of this year, 57 percent of Ukrainians were employed, which is nearly 10 percentage points higher than last year.

Similarly to previous years, the majority of war refugees from Ukraine work as unskilled labor (39 percent of those employed); another 18 percent of those employed work as skilled labor and craftspeople, while 16.8 percent work as service and sales workers.

By sector, the highest number are employed in manufacturing (24.8 percent of those employed), while another 16.4 percent work in administrative and support services.

Approximately 3,100 Ukrainians are registered as unemployed, constituting 6.5 percent of all registered unemployed in Estonia and 15.5 percent of working-age Ukrainians. In the first quarter of this year, overall employment in Estonia stood at 68.4 percent, and unemployment at 7.8 percent.

According to SKA, the Estonian state paid €7 million in family benefits to war refugees in the first quarter of 2024 from Ukraine, while local governments paid out another €9 million in the first half of the year.

According to Statistics Estonia figures, in the first quarter, Ukrainian citizens earned an average gross monthly wage of €1,424, compared to Estonia's overall average gross wage of €1,933.

Liis Paloots, head of the Migration Team at SKA, told ERR that it isn't possible to generalize about Ukrainians' subsistence, however the state has paid out less in subsistence benefits this year.

"In the case of subsistence benefits paid by local governments, we can see that less than half of all recipients are recipients of temporary protection from Ukraine, which confirms that war refugees' daily subsistence and well-being vary and cannot be generalized," Paloots said.

"Generally, however, we've noted that there's been a certain decrease in the number of war refugees from Ukraine among subsistence benefits recipients," she added.

The same rights and obligations extend to war refugees who have been granted a residence permit in Estonia, including compensation and benefits.

One exception is pensions, where pension-aged war refugees from Ukraine are paid a benefit equaling the difference between the national pension rate and their foreign pension, provided they do not have a prior history of pensionable employment in Estonia.

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