Despite the pandemic, Poland remains attractive to Ukrainians
22:52
Despite the restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic, Poland remains attractive to Ukrainians. At the end of April 2021, 780,000 foreigners were reported to social insurance. This is a record number, and the highest increase compared to March was in Ukrainians, notes the Polish Economic Institute (PIE).
In the PIE analysis published on Thursday, the opinion of the President of ZUS, Gertruda Uścińska, was cited, according to which, had it not been for the pandemic, the number of foreigners insured in Poland would have exceeded one million. As PIE calculates, since 2008 the number of foreigners reported to ZUS has increased eleven times – from 65,000 up to 725,000 in 2020.
Since 2015, Ukrainians account for more than half of all foreigners insured in Poland. As PIE calculates, in 2020 their share in this group reached 72 percent.
"The pandemic did not affect the number of foreigners covered by ZUS insurance," the authors of the report wrote.
They added that the dynamics of their number growth weakened somewhat.
As noted, the ethnic structure of the insured did not change either. At the end of December 2019, Ukrainians accounted for more than half of all foreigners, the total number of which, according to the Central Statistical Office, could be over 2.1 million. The number of insured Ukrainians in Poland at the end of 2020 was 532,000 people.
In its analysis, PIE cites research commissioned by the Personnel Service, which shows that 46 percent of employers admitted that Ukrainians took advantage of the possibility of extending their stay under the Anti-Crisis Shield. At the same time, as much as 28 percent of companies currently employ workers from Ukraine, while a year ago it was 11 percent.
