According to Statistics Poland, the unemployment rate in Poland has remained in July at the same level it was in June 2020, with Poland’s current rate standing at 6.1 percent
A number of experts have pointed to the positive data as a sign that Poland has been charting the right course, especially considering the country has managed to maintain the third best unemployment rate in the European Union.
Monika Kurtek, the chief economist of the Polish Postal Bank, emphasized that this level of unemployment was incredibly low given the scale of recession in the economy. She pointed to the government’s anti-crisis shield as having stopped a wave of layoffs and “forced” companies to maintain jobs for a few months after receiving financial aid.
Statistics Poland also published other important data — the so-called Labor Force Survey (BAEL) unemployment index. It takes into account readiness to take up work and therefore, does not include those who are unemployed and do not wish to find jobs.
The BAEL unemployment index was 3.1 percent in the second quarter of 2020 and remained at the same level it had been in the first quarter of 2020. This means that unemployed people comprised 3.1 percent of the population eligible for work aged 15 and above.
Although unemployment has risen, Poland is far from a worst-case scenario.
Between April and June 2020, the number of working people decreased by 151,000, but Poland has weathered the crisis comparatively well with other European nations.
“This is, of course, a high number, but it is not a decrease which would set the Polish economy back a few years,” explained Andrzej Kubisiak, the deputy director for analysis and research at the Polish Economic Institute.
He emphasized that given the global recession and the severity of the economic shock caused by a pandemic, the shifts on the Polish job market were of a limited scale.
