Currently the state activity in the direction of overcoming the consequences of the disaster significantly decreased, that has deepened economic, social and demographic problems of this region and negatively affected the radioactively contaminated areas rural population living standards indicators. There is an urgent need to study the contaminated areas rural residents level of income, their formation sources and establish the relationship of population living standards with their social status and social benefits. The research is dedicated to major factors of income level formation and employment of the rural population in the radioactive contamination grounding. Significant income stratification of Zhytomyr region rural contaminated areas population was found during the research. It was established that 64.8 % rural population resisting the radioactively contaminated areas live below the poverty line. Radioactively contaminated areas rural resident’s income is formed mainly due to pension payments (57.1 % of respondents’ answers) and wages (41.9 %). A quarter of radioactive contamination areas rural families’ income is received from household grown products sales, 14.3 % – forest origin products. Public sector, forestry and agriculture enterprises are major employers in the radioactive contamination area. A low level of income and high differentiation degree are observed on the territory of rural areas that was affected from radioactive contamination. Rural resident’s self-employment desire and revenues from household production and forest industry significant proportion is the main tendency of revenues formation. High level and duration of unemployment on radioactive contamination rural area is caused by labor market conjuncture violations.