Unemployment is rising, job vacancies are collapsing, and employment is falling – Poland's labour market in clearly weaker shape
The beginning of 2026 brought a marked deterioration in the situation on the Polish labour market – according to the latest data from GUS (Statistics Poland) and analysis by the Gremi Personal Analytical Centre. The unemployment rate rose to 6.1%, i.e. by 0.7 percentage points year on year, and the number of registered unemployed reached 956.2 thousand people. At the same time, employment in the enterprise sector fell in February to 6.71 million people (-0.8% y/y), and the number of job vacancies reported to labour offices shrank by 67% year on year, to 21.7 thousand. Meanwhile, the scale of announced collective redundancies increased by 50%, confirming the growing restructuring pressure in the economy.
The labour market is losing momentum. Unemployment is accelerating, while corporate hiring is clearly slowing
GUS data show that the beginning of 2026 confirms the labour market's entry into a phase of clear weakening. The rise in the unemployment rate to 6.1% represents not only a year-on-year deterioration but also an acceleration of the negative trend compared with previous months. In numerical terms, this means nearly 955 thousand registered unemployed and a double-digit increase on an annual basis.
The slump on the labour demand side is even more pronounced. The number of job vacancies reported to public employment offices fell by 67% year on year, to 21.7 thousand. This is one of the sharpest declines in recent years, which – even taking regulatory changes into account – points to a real curtailment of companies' recruitment activity and a clearly more cautious approach to hiring new employees.
Employment in the enterprise sector stood at 6.71 million people at the beginning of 2026, representing a decrease of 53 thousand year on year (-0.8%). Although the monthly changes are small, the annual trend shows a consistent shrinking of the labour market. Against this backdrop, companies are increasingly shifting into cost-adjustment mode. In recent months, at least ten large enterprises have publicly announced workforce reductions affecting a total of several thousand employees. At the same time, the surplus of companies planning to hire over those declaring layoffs is diminishing, indicating the fading of earlier pressure toward employment growth.
"Data from the beginning of the year show that the labour market is losing its resilience to the economic slowdown. We are entering a stage where hiring decisions are becoming increasingly conservative, and efficiency – rather than the scale of employment – is gaining importance. This is a qualitative shift that will shape the labour market in the coming quarters." – says Evgenij Kirichenko, founder of the Gremi Personal Analytical Centre.
Collective redundancies are accelerating. More and more companies are entering restructuring
Labour office data show a marked acceleration of restructuring processes. In the first months of 2026, companies announced their intention to carry out collective redundancies covering 9,060 people, representing a 50% year-on-year increase. At the same time, the number of ongoing procedures is growing – at the end of February they covered 18,576 people (+16% y/y). In practice, this means that an increasingly large part of the economy is already in a phase of active employment adjustments, not merely reduction plans. In addition, 41 thousand people were dismissed directly at employers' initiative, representing an 11.9% year-on-year increase. This includes both position reductions and job liquidations or company bankruptcies.
Industry is losing ground, services are stabilising employment
The employment structure in Poland is becoming increasingly differentiated. In manufacturing, employment fell by 1.4% y/y to around 2.37 million people. The steepest declines were recorded in the automotive industry (-3.4%), furniture production (-3.1%), machinery industry (-1.2%) and metal products (-1.2%). Similar tendencies are visible in construction and wholesale trade, confirming the broad-based nature of the slowdown in cyclical sectors.
Some service segments and selected industrial branches remain on an upward trend. Employment is growing in logistics (+0.5%), HoReCa (+2.1%), electronics production (+1.7%), and in the production of transport equipment other than automotive (+2.6%), which also includes segments of a defence-related nature.
Against this backdrop, the importance of foreign workers is growing – their number increased by 9% y/y to 1.291 million people, including Ukrainians, up 9.9% to 860.8 thousand, which in many sectors stabilises the current functioning of the labour market. An economy based on consumption
The macroeconomic picture at the beginning of 2026 remains clearly divergent. On the one hand, relatively stable domestic consumption persists – retail sales rose by 5% y/y in February, following a 4.4% increase in January. This means that households remain the key factor sustaining economic activity.
On the other hand, industry and construction remain under pressure. Industrial production, on a two-month basis, shows no real growth, and the value of construction output fell by 6.2% y/y. At the same time, exports in January declined by 4.6% y/y, and imports by 8.4%, indicating a weakening of the external component and a greater reliance of growth on domestic demand. Industry also shows a decline in new export orders, confirming a further shift of the growth structure toward domestic consumption. - Economic growth is increasingly based on domestic consumption, while exports and investment are ceasing to act as an engine of the business cycle, notes Evgenij Kirichenko.
Wages are growing more slowly. Structural changes are having an increasing impact on wage statistics
At the beginning of 2026, wage growth is clearly slowing down. In February, the average gross salary rose by 6.07% y/y to PLN 9,135.7, compared with 6.13% in January and markedly higher levels recorded in the second half of 2025.
The slowdown is both cyclical and structural in nature. On the one hand, it results from weakening wage pressure amid a softer labour market; on the other, from structural effects such as the increase in the minimum wage to PLN 4,806 gross and employment reductions in lower-paid segments of the labour market. Clear sectoral differences are also visible: in the automotive industry wage growth stood at 8.75%, while in the food industry it was 3.62%, showing an increasing stratification of wage dynamics in the economy.
The 2026 market at a turning point
A summary of the latest GUS data and analyses by the Gremi Personal Analytical Centre shows that the Polish economy in 2026 has entered a phase of selective slowdown. The labour market is losing momentum, unemployment is rising, and the scale of restructuring is systematically increasing. The economy is being sustained by domestic consumption, while industry, exports and part of investment show weakness. As a result, a growth model based on sectoral imbalance is becoming increasingly apparent, one in which macroeconomic stability does not translate proportionally into the employment situation and the condition of the labour market.