Poland’s labor market increasingly balanced - Hays

Poland has a well-balanced labor market, with unemployment rate at 9.5 percent (down from last year’s 10.4 percent) and long-term unemployment of 3.3 percent, also lower than last year, when it stood at 3.6 percent, according to this year’s Global Skills Index report prepared by recruitment firm Hays. “A pick-up in job creation in the export-oriented manufacturing sector has helped employment growth and is behind recent declines in the overall unemployment rate,” the report reads. Poland’s score of 5.0 (on a 0 to 10.0 scale) in Hays’ index (against last year’s 5.2) means an almost perfect balance between skills and vacancies. A score close to 0 indicates that companies are facing skills shortage, which may lead to wage inflation, whereas a score close to 10 is typical for labor markets with high unemployment levels among the skilled workforce. The factors contributing to higher mismatch on the Polish labor market are wage pressure in high-skilled industries, as well as labor market restrictions. “Poland is now recognized as a fairly stable economy with a rich technically skilled talent pool. Thus it is attracting many international investments in manufacturing and IT industries. In addition, Poland has been recognized a premier location in Europe to locate a shared services centres. Recently those are also developing from standard operational tasks to more advanced processes like HR, Procurement &Logistics, marketing and strategic planning,” said Michał Młynarczyk, managing director of Hays Poland for the CEE region. However, one of the country’s major weaknesses is youth unemployment. “We can still observe a significant skills mismatch with the big proportion of graduates unable to find their first job. Yet the process of closing this gap is in progress with much closer cooperation of Universities, Local authorities and Business,” Młynarczyk added.