Poland's Labor Market : The Challenge of Job Creation

World Bank

Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNTING;    CONSOLIDATION;    DISCUSSIONS;    EARLY RETIREMENT;    ECONOMIC GROWTH;   

DOI  :  10.1596/0-8213-5037-4
RP-ID  :  23033

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The study reviews recent labor marketdevelopments in Poland, examining the factors behind therise in unemployment, and, proposing actions that shouldcontribute to increased job creation rates. Its main purposeis to inform - based on research findings - on the policydialogue regarding the current labor market situation in thecountry. Those main findings indicate that the rise inunemployment results primarily from an acceleration of jobdestruction, that begun with the wave of enterpriserestructuring in the aftermath of the Russia crisis, and haspersisted in part, because of an imbalance in thefiscal-monetary policy mix. It also finds that the recentrise in unemployment has highlighted important barriers inthe transition from old, to new jobs. These barriers includea binding minimum wage, high taxes on labor income,limitations in the labor code, and a relatively easy accessto early retirement, and other social benefits.Additionally, the problems with the ongoing restructuring ofthe Polish labor market have been compounded by an increasein new labor market entrants, primarily recent schoolgraduates joining the labor force, and, of particularconcern are the new labor market entrants with only basicvocational education or less, namely in rural areas, giventhat educational attainment is a determining factor onemployment status. The policy agenda needs to graduallyaddress unemployment issues, through better fiscal-monetarypolicy mix, through greater flexibility in the wagestructure, and, through tax reductions on labor income, andchanges in the labor code. Moreover, investments inworker's education and training needs to be improved,realigning the incentives under labor market programs, andlowering the costs of starting, and running businesses.