Poland has come out first in the European Union and second in the world in terms of rebuilding its labour market from the impact of the pandemic, according to new data.
A study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) looks at the divergence between economies in terms of their recovery 18 months into the coronavirus crisis. It compares labour market data from 2020 and forecasts for 2021 with figures from 2019, before the pandemic struck.
In terms of working hours, Poland saw a 2.1% reduction in 2020, which is expected to flip to a 2.4% increase by the end of this year, according to analysis of the figures by Andrzej Kubisiak, deputy director of the Polish Economic Institute (PIE).
Both those figures are the best in the EU and put Poland behind only Norway in 2021 and New Zealand and Burundi in 2020.
Utracone godziny pracy pokazują zarówno zmniejszenie wymiaru czasu pracy jak i całkowite zwolnienia.
W '20 r. wszystkie kraje 🇪🇺 odnotowały spadek liczby przepracowanych godzin.
Najmniejsze spadki:
🇵🇱-2,1%
🇫🇮-2,4%
🇳🇱-2,8%Największe spadki:
🇵🇹-12%
🇦🇹-12,3%
🇮🇹-12,9%
2/6 pic.twitter.com/CVNPpYFUS6— Andrzej Kubisiak (@KubisiakA) November 3, 2021
“Employment has increased in middle and high-income countries, as well as those with higher vaccine availability,” wrote Kubisiak of PIE. “In others, the situation did not improve significantly or the hours worked continued to decline.”
The other European countries with the fewest lost hours in 2020 were Finland (2.4%) and the Netherlands (2.8%). The largest drops hit Portugal (12%), Austria (12.3%) and Italy (12.9%).
The EU as a whole faced a 7.4% drop in 2020 and a 2.7% forecast fall in 2021, while these figures were 8.7% and 3.4% respectively for the G20 and 8.9% and 4.3% for the world.
Poland’s economy has been showing signs of rapid recovery, as GDP growth reached 11.1% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2021, according to Statistics Poland (GUS), a state agency. That represents the largest single increase since such records began in 1995.
However, the positive figures have been accompanied by galloping inflation, which reached 6.8% year-on-year in October. That is Poland’s highest inflation in two decades, and among the highest currently in the EU.
Main image credit: Paul Sableman/Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
