About a third of the estimated 2 million Ukrainians fleeing the war to Poland will be able to start work by the summer, easing a labor shortage in the European Union’s largest eastern economy, a survey of companies showed.
Poland, along with other countries in the bloc’s east, has long reported a high number of job vacancies as younger Poles emigrate to better paying jobs elsewhere. With about 200,000 currently unfilled positions, Polish unemployment dropped to 2.9% in the first quarter of this year, the EU’s second-lowest after the Czech Republic.
Among the 300 companies surveyed by Personnel Service last month, a third of them already employ Ukrainians, and another quarter plan to. The majority of those looking to hire or already working with Ukrainians are from the hospitality sector.
“Russia’s attack on Ukraine is changing the situation on the labor market, which early this year put a brake on our economic expansion,” said Krzysztof Inglot, a founder of Personnel Service, a recruitment agency.
As many as 2 million Ukrainians were employed in Poland in the past, making it the largest cohort of foreign workers before pandemic restrictions and the allure of higher salaries in Germany and elsewhere cut that number in half before the war.
