Help wanted
The government this week launches a program to help college graduates find their first jobs, but opportunities are expected to remain scarce and competition tough
University graduate Ola Przyłuska has been looking for work since last June. Her credentials are impeccable: a master's degree in environmental protection from Warsaw University, fluent English and French, and work experience in part-time jobs throughout her studies. She has sent out more than 35 copies of her resume to companies in Poland and Western Europe but received just two replies and had one interview. "I didn't think it would be this hard to find work," said Przyłuska, 25. "When we started our studies we were told by the university that companies would be lining up to employ us when we graduated." Instead, Przyłuska and many fellow university graduates have joined the growing ranks of Poland's unemployed. At the end of December, unemployment hit 17.4%, putting 3.1 million Poles out of work. This translates to around one job offer for every 585 unemployed people. Although unemployment among university graduates is relatively small, 5.8% at the end of last year, it is expanding at an alarming rate and offers for graduates are few. After a wave of enterprise restructuring in the 1990s and then the Russian currency crisis in 1998, Poland's unemployment levels have been rising. According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS), from 1997 to 2000 the number of unemployed graduates increased by 140%. Over the coming five years, as Poland's population boom from the early 1980s passes through school and university, and into this country's stalled job market, the rate of unemployment among graduates is expected to keep increasing. Between now and 2005, an estimated 1 million new graduates will enter the job market - bad news in a country where youths up to the age of 24 already account for almost one-third of the unemployed. Government's "first" idea In an effort to ease this transition from education to employment, this week the Labor and Social Policy Ministry will launch "First Job," a package of labor market initiatives to help graduates find work. The package, which estimates that 520,000 new graduates will need help finding work at the end of the academic year in June, will be open to all graduates registering at the unemployment office. The main points include a partial subsidy of social security payments for businesses that employ graduates and a full social security subsidy for graduates who start their own business. There will be additional subsidies for companies that take on part-time graduate employees plus a system of cheap credits and "micro-loans" to encourage graduates to start their own businesses. Every graduate registering at an unemployment office will receive advice on job-seeking skills and training courses to improve their qualifications. Another card the government is considering throwing on the table - if trade unions ever agree to it - is lowering the minimum wage for graduates, according to Andrzej Zdebski, the Labor Ministry's undersecretary of state. In the first year of employment they would get 80% of the minimum wage and in the second year 90%. The minimum gross wage stands at about $185 per month. Creating opportunity Critics say that "First Job" is too little too late, that the Labor Ministry proposals just redistribute jobs rather than create new jobs and that what is really needed is wide-ranging reform of the labor market and the general business environment. "This (Labor Ministry program) is using aspirin to treat a very serious illness because unemployment is a very serious problem from an economic and social point of view," said Professor Mieczysław Kabaj of the Institute of Labor and Social Studies, a consulting group. Poland's unemployment problem can only be solved by new economic policy, Kabaj said. That means encouraging business investment by cutting the country's high interest rates, cutting labor costs - which account for 46.8% of gross salary - to help small businesses grow and increasing Polish exports. "The government isn't creating jobs," Kabaj said. "The government is creating conditions: tax conditions, interest rate conditions, exchange rate conditions." The World Bank's senior labor economist, Jan Rutkowski, voiced similar concerns. "I simply think we shouldn't have excessive expectations as to the impact of this on chances of graduates or school leavers finding good jobs," he said. Even the ministry's Zdebski, agreed that the "First Job" package has shortcomings. "It's not possible to solve the problems of the labor market by this program, sure," he said. "The thing we can do is give people easier access to the job market. "If you want to do something on the labor market, you have to find money...We do not have enough money at the moment so we try to find the proper direction for the market and we try to steer the money this way." Tougher labor market reforms and packages will follow in the coming months, he said. Careering into the future At Politechnika Krakowska, career adviser Monika Domańska has seen first hand the effect of Poland's economy on the job rate. Since the end of last year, graduate job offers have fallen by 20%. Hardest hit have been jobs for graduates in construction, IT, chemistry, and management and marketing. "I think the situation is getting worse and worse," said Domańska, who heads one of 40 university career advising offices in Poland. "On the one hand you have the recession and people are being paid less and less money." And on the other hand, added Domańska, there are the high labor costs. This is particularly hard for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which Domańska estimates account for 60% of jobs for Polytechnik's graduates. Big business accounts for 20%, and the remaining graduates find work either in the family business or start up their own company. During the past year Domańska has seen more and more SMEs refusing to employ graduates on a full-time basis and instead they are asking job seekers to set themselves up as a small company, which they then employ on a contract basis, avoiding their social security (ZUS) obligations. "Some graduates do well at this because they are entrepreneurial," Domańska said. "For other graduates, the bureaucratic obstacles they have to overcome are too much." One emerging opportunity is from overseas employment offers, she said. "And the reason is very simple: language." Students who are fluent in Polish - difficult for foreigners to master - and Western European languages have an edge. The Politechnik is getting more job offers in Great Britain and Holland for its graduates and the school is continuing to foster relationships with other European universities and colleges, she said. Russia to the rescue An unexpected source of new job offers has come from Polish SMEs interested in doing business in Russia - the first time since the Russian ruble crash of 1998. "I think this is a great opportunity, and so do the students because they are starting to learn Russian again," Domańska said. "I think Polish businesses are again thinking of going there. The business conditions are still not favorable ... but it's a huge market and it's very close to Poland and it's also mentally close for us." It's a similar scenario at HR Internal Consultants - one of Warsaw's biggest employment companies. The company's president, Grzegorz Krowicki, believes that as the Russian economy improves more requests will be coming for graduates. "Requests from both Polish companies going to Russia and from international companies based in Russia that cannot find a sufficient number of graduates there, I think they will search for graduates in Poland," he said. It's good news for Krowicki. Job offers through his firm for graduates have declined by at least 60% over the past nine months. And he thinks the worst is yet to come later this year. "It's extremely difficult to find placements for graduates," Krowicki said. "I would say it's impossible across the board. We are currently in a situation where many companies are downsizing and they have stopped hiring graduates. The big six (accounting firms) are still hiring graduates, which is normal policy for these types of companies, but many others are not - in particular small and medium-sized enterprises." Such grim news hasn't failed to dim the optimism of Ola Przyłuska in her search for her first job. "I know I'm going to find a job," she said. "I speak English well and I speak French and I have experience with work all through my studies. I think this current situation will just postpone my job."
University graduate Ola Przyłuska has been looking for work since last June. Her credentials are impeccable: a master's degree in environmental protection from Warsaw University, fluent English and French, and work experience in part-time jobs throughout her studies. She has sent out more than 35 copies of her resume to companies in Poland and Western Europe but received just two replies and had one interview. "I didn't think it would be this hard to find work," said Przyłuska, 25. "When we started our studies we were told by the university that companies would be lining up to employ us when we graduated." Instead, Przyłuska and many fellow university graduates have joined the growing ranks of Poland's unemployed. At the end of December, unemployment hit 17.4%, putting 3.1 million Poles out of work. This translates to around one job offer for every 585 unemployed people. Although unemployment among university graduates is relatively small, 5.8% at the end of last year, it is expanding at an alarming rate and offers for graduates are few. After a wave of enterprise restructuring in the 1990s and then the Russian currency crisis in 1998, Poland's unemployment levels have been rising. According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS), from 1997 to 2000 the number of unemployed graduates increased by 140%. Over the coming five years, as Poland's population boom from the early 1980s passes through school and university, and into this country's stalled job market, the rate of unemployment among graduates is expected to keep increasing. Between now and 2005, an estimated 1 million new graduates will enter the job market - bad news in a country where youths up to the age of 24 already account for almost one-third of the unemployed. Government's "first" idea In an effort to ease this transition from education to employment, this week the Labor and Social Policy Ministry will launch "First Job," a package of labor market initiatives to help graduates find work. The package, which estimates that 520,000 new graduates will need help finding work at the end of the academic year in June, will be open to all graduates registering at the unemployment office. The main points include a partial subsidy of social security payments for businesses that employ graduates and a full social security subsidy for graduates who start their own business. There will be additional subsidies for companies that take on part-time graduate employees plus a system of cheap credits and "micro-loans" to encourage graduates to start their own businesses. Every graduate registering at an unemployment office will receive advice on job-seeking skills and training courses to improve their qualifications. Another card the government is considering throwing on the table - if trade unions ever agree to it - is lowering the minimum wage for graduates, according to Andrzej Zdebski, the Labor Ministry's undersecretary of state. In the first year of employment they would get 80% of the minimum wage and in the second year 90%. The minimum gross wage stands at about $185 per month. Creating opportunity Critics say that "First Job" is too little too late, that the Labor Ministry proposals just redistribute jobs rather than create new jobs and that what is really needed is wide-ranging reform of the labor market and the general business environment. "This (Labor Ministry program) is using aspirin to treat a very serious illness because unemployment is a very serious problem from an economic and social point of view," said Professor Mieczysław Kabaj of the Institute of Labor and Social Studies, a consulting group. Poland's unemployment problem can only be solved by new economic policy, Kabaj said. That means encouraging business investment by cutting the country's high interest rates, cutting labor costs - which account for 46.8% of gross salary - to help small businesses grow and increasing Polish exports. "The government isn't creating jobs," Kabaj said. "The government is creating conditions: tax conditions, interest rate conditions, exchange rate conditions." The World Bank's senior labor economist, Jan Rutkowski, voiced similar concerns. "I simply think we shouldn't have excessive expectations as to the impact of this on chances of graduates or school leavers finding good jobs," he said. Even the ministry's Zdebski, agreed that the "First Job" package has shortcomings. "It's not possible to solve the problems of the labor market by this program, sure," he said. "The thing we can do is give people easier access to the job market. "If you want to do something on the labor market, you have to find money...We do not have enough money at the moment so we try to find the proper direction for the market and we try to steer the money this way." Tougher labor market reforms and packages will follow in the coming months, he said. Careering into the future At Politechnika Krakowska, career adviser Monika Domańska has seen first hand the effect of Poland's economy on the job rate. Since the end of last year, graduate job offers have fallen by 20%. Hardest hit have been jobs for graduates in construction, IT, chemistry, and management and marketing. "I think the situation is getting worse and worse," said Domańska, who heads one of 40 university career advising offices in Poland. "On the one hand you have the recession and people are being paid less and less money." And on the other hand, added Domańska, there are the high labor costs. This is particularly hard for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which Domańska estimates account for 60% of jobs for Polytechnik's graduates. Big business accounts for 20%, and the remaining graduates find work either in the family business or start up their own company. During the past year Domańska has seen more and more SMEs refusing to employ graduates on a full-time basis and instead they are asking job seekers to set themselves up as a small company, which they then employ on a contract basis, avoiding their social security (ZUS) obligations. "Some graduates do well at this because they are entrepreneurial," Domańska said. "For other graduates, the bureaucratic obstacles they have to overcome are too much." One emerging opportunity is from overseas employment offers, she said. "And the reason is very simple: language." Students who are fluent in Polish - difficult for foreigners to master - and Western European languages have an edge. The Politechnik is getting more job offers in Great Britain and Holland for its graduates and the school is continuing to foster relationships with other European universities and colleges, she said. Russia to the rescue An unexpected source of new job offers has come from Polish SMEs interested in doing business in Russia - the first time since the Russian ruble crash of 1998. "I think this is a great opportunity, and so do the students because they are starting to learn Russian again," Domańska said. "I think Polish businesses are again thinking of going there. The business conditions are still not favorable ... but it's a huge market and it's very close to Poland and it's also mentally close for us." It's a similar scenario at HR Internal Consultants - one of Warsaw's biggest employment companies. The company's president, Grzegorz Krowicki, believes that as the Russian economy improves more requests will be coming for graduates. "Requests from both Polish companies going to Russia and from international companies based in Russia that cannot find a sufficient number of graduates there, I think they will search for graduates in Poland," he said. It's good news for Krowicki. Job offers through his firm for graduates have declined by at least 60% over the past nine months. And he thinks the worst is yet to come later this year. "It's extremely difficult to find placements for graduates," Krowicki said. "I would say it's impossible across the board. We are currently in a situation where many companies are downsizing and they have stopped hiring graduates. The big six (accounting firms) are still hiring graduates, which is normal policy for these types of companies, but many others are not - in particular small and medium-sized enterprises." Such grim news hasn't failed to dim the optimism of Ola Przyłuska in her search for her first job. "I know I'm going to find a job," she said. "I speak English well and I speak French and I have experience with work all through my studies. I think this current situation will just postpone my job."
