In Poland, the unemployment rate has remained below 6% for several years, and according to the EU methodology, it is half as much and one of the lowest in the EU. Employees have already become accustomed to the fact that the situation on the labor market is favorable for them. However, the first disturbing signals are starting to appear, heralding a possible change in the trend. Some industries have suffered, for example, due to the slowdown in Germany, others are considering choosing a location other than Poland due to high labor or energy costs. For now, activating economically inactive people remains a huge challenge.
– We are currently observing an increase in the time it takes to look for a job, even for people with experience, who should have no problem finding a job. The vector is shifting from the employee market to the employer market, despite the fact that we still have a low level of unemployment. It is logical that employees should be sought after, but this is not happening – Tomasz Szklarski, vice president of the board of Zmotywowani.pl, co-founder of Enpulse, a platform for measuring employee engagement, tells the Newseria news agency.
– The number of job offers published by employers on the market has decreased and their requirements have also increased. Employers have realized that they can focus on selecting the best talents on the market, because we see that in many industries there has been a cooling.
According to data from the Central Statistical Office, 254.8 thousand job offers were reported to labor offices in the first quarter, which is 10.2 percent less than in the same period of 2024. Both the number of offers from the private sector (by 10.5 percent) and the public sector (by 8.8 percent) decreased. At the end of March this year, job offers unused for more than one month constituted 23.1 percent (compared to 29 percent a year earlier). On the one hand, experts explain this phenomenon with the good situation on the labor market, and on the other, with a change in the method of recruiting employees. Employers are counting less and less on recruiting an employee with the right competences in the labor office.
A slightly better picture emerges from the analysis of recruitment portals. According to data from the Element recruitment system for Grant Thornton, in March 2025, employers published 291,000 new job advertisements on the 50 largest recruitment portals in Poland. This is 29,000 (11%) more compared to the same month in 2024. In addition, March was the fourth month in a row in which the annual dynamics of the number of job advertisements remained around 10%. “In 2024, such dynamics occurred rarely and were largely artificially boosted by statistical effects (e.g. the difference in the number of working days in a given month),” the company comments.
Despite the persistently low unemployment rate, the number of people employed is also falling. Employment in the corporate sector last increased slightly year-on-year in July 2023. The registered unemployment rate has been hovering around 5% for several years, and last exceeded 6% in the fall of 2021. In March 2025, unemployment stood at 5.3%.
– The entire automotive industry is not hiring, it is only laying off people, no new investments are being built, as a country we have a very low level of investment to GDP, 17% and a dime a dozen – enumerates Tomasz Szklarski.
– Companies that are thinking about investing in our region analyze all these parameters and come to the conclusion that Poland is no longer such an attractive country from the point of view of investment. On the one hand, the low level of unemployment, i.e. fear of a small number of talents, a long recruitment process, high costs, so for companies this is the first red light that they can actually consider investing elsewhere, they can move this production to some distant place in the world. The number of people who are economically inactive is not decreasing all the time, this is also a very big burden on the labor market. One of the challenges is their activation.
According to the preliminary results of the Economic Activity Survey (GUS), a decrease in the economic activity of the population was observed in the fourth quarter of 2024. The number of employed and the employment rate were lower than in the third quarter. The number of unemployed people and the unemployment rate also decreased. On the other hand, the number of economically inactive people increased. The economically active accounted for 58.5% of the population aged 15-89. The economic activity rate was 65.5% among men and 51.9% among women. In absolute numbers, this means 17.74 million economically active people, of which: 17.25 million were employed, while less than 0.5 million were unemployed. The economically inactive population in this age group numbered 12.61 million. The economically active population decreased compared to the third quarter of 2024 (by 56 thousand people, i.e. by 0.3%) and compared to the fourth quarter of 2023 (by 128 thousand, i.e. by 0.7%).
– If some industries continue to experience such a recession, unemployment will increase – indicates the labor market expert. – For example, the construction industry, where both employment and investment levels were very high, is now experiencing a cooling. This also affects the entire economy, because there are many related industries and this immediately implies an increase or decrease in the labor market. Energy costs, which are also very high, mean that some businesses will close because they are becoming unprofitable, and for now there is no sign that these costs will decrease.
