According to Eurostat, the unemployment rate in Poland, after considering seasonal factors, was 2.8 % in January 2023, down from 2.9 % in December. Poland is the European runner-up in terms of lowest unemployment.

The statistical office of the European Union has once again confirmed the good and stable situation on the Polish labour market. 

“This is an undoubted success, which we owe to the appropriate policy of the United Right government. We achieved the second best result in the European Union, overtaken only by the Czech Republic with a result of 2.5 %”, said Minister for Family and Social Policy Marlena Maląg. 

She explains that such good unemployment figures are the result of government policy. “As we have proved many times before, we are able to face world crises”, said Marlena Maląg, adding that the pandemic affected the whole world and led to unimaginable unemployment in many countries, but Poland came out of it unscathed. “Another test was the war in Ukraine. We passed the test of humanity by providing employment for the citizens of that country while protecting the Polish labour market”, noted the head of the Ministry of Family and Social Policy.

PKO BP bank chief economist Piotr Bujak points out that despite the worsening economic situation, unemployment in Poland will remain low. In his opinion, one of the reasons for this is “the deteriorating demographics of our country, which makes the labour supply shrink”. This year, more than 100,000 more people will retire than will enter the labour market. Many employers will downsize without making any redundancies.

Up to now, in Eurostat’s compilations, Poland has ranked second with the lowest unemployment in the EU on a par with Germany. In January, Germany dropped to third place, with unemployment there at 3 %.

The country with the highest unemployment rate, 13 %, is Spain. For the EU, the unemployment rate was 6.1 %.

Adrian Andrzejewski