Poles eager for manual labor
In June, the Central Statistical Office (GUS) reported that the registered unemployment rate reached its lowest since August 1990. The result for June was only 4.9 percent (there were only 818,000 unemployed in the registers). Poland also ranked second among OECD countries with the highest increase in labor force participation (+3.5 p.p.) compared to the pre-2019 COVID pandemic.
Meanwhile, Poles are looking around for manual labor and are increasingly looking for offers where immigrants previously worked, according to the analytical center of employment agency Gremi Personal.
"These are physical, unskilled jobs – in industry, food processing, warehouses. This has not yet taken on a mass scale, but may herald an interesting trend," Anna Dzhobolda, head of Gremi Personal's recruitment department, said.
This trend is also slowly beginning to be seen on the Internet. According to Gremi Personal analysts, the number of Google searches in Polish for unskilled jobs in the industry, logistics and commerce increased by about 10 percent over the year in users who only had Polish set in their browser. Poles' interest in previously unpopular occupations may be related to the rising cost of living and the fact that wage rates in occupations requiring physical strength continue to rise.
(WBJ)
