For seasonal workers in Poland, December is the second time for good wages, after the holidays. There are a lot of attractive temporary job offers primarily in trade and in logistics and transport. This has to do with the traffic generated by Christmas.

°Trade is spurred by the fact that we buy presents, and transport by the fact that someone has to wrap these presents and deliver them to the intended recipients°, says IDEA HR Group’s labour market expert Anna Sudolska.

Trade and logistics dominate the job offers. Gift and sale traffic in shopping malls starts as early as November.

°The start of the wave is Black Friday, and then by Christmas Eve we actually have almost total occupancy in the shops. Hands are needed to sell, lay out goods, pack merchandise and simply extra people to serve customers. Discount shops are hiring, but so are media and clothing shops, gadget shops, all places that are beneficiaries of the festive season°, says Sudolska.

In November and December, a very profitable additional job is employment in transport. Many ‘seasonal couriers’ are temporarily employed in the logistics halls of large e-commerce chains appear.

Wages for seasonal work vary widely. In the trade, in shopping malls, they range from PLN 25 to 35 net per hour. A Christmas tree seller will earn a net wage of around 25 to 27 PLN, but a carp seller in the fish department of a shopping mall or market can earn more than 30 PLN per hour. In the e-commerce sector, rates can sometimes be higher, but this is largely dependent on working hours. It is also possible to earn quite well as a Santa Claus – wages at events start at PLN 80 per hour and go up to PLN 500, depending on the nature of the event.

°It is a well-known fact that a Santa in a shopping mall will earn less than a Santa at a private company event”, assesses Sudolska.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński