The minimum wage will increase in 2023. From 1 January, the lowest salary will be PLN 3490, and from 1 July, it will be PLN 3600. It is estimated that around 3 million people will receive a higher salary next year.

“We are fulfilling the promises made to citizens. At the same time, we are working to make the net wages of Poles grow even more”, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, adding that the government is ‘in parallel fighting for every job so that the level of unemployment is as low as possible’.

The Council of Ministers adopted a regulation on the amount of the minimum wage and the amount of the minimum hourly rate in 2023. The average amount of the minimum wage next year will be PLN 3545. This means that as of 1 July 2023, the minimum wage will increase by PLN 1850, or almost 106%, compared to 2015. The minimum hourly rate for certain civil law contracts will also increase in 2023 – from 1 January it will be PLN 22.80, and from 1 July – PLN 23.50.

The head of government convinces that ‘the Polish economy today is not competing by low wages but by better high technologies and productive work that is supposed to pay off for people’.

Compared to 2015, the minimum wage will increase by more than 116% from 1 July 2023. In 2015, the lowest salary was PLN 1286.16 net, and from 1 July 2023 it will be PLN 2783.86 net.

Poland is currently a country with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the European Union. According to Eurostat, the unemployment rate in Poland was 2.6 % in July, compared to 6 % in the EU and 6.6 % in the euro area. Poland thus ranked second after the Czech Republic (2.3%) for the lowest unemployment rate in the EU.

Adrian Andrzejewski