January unemployment lowest in 25 years

According to the report released yesterday by the Central Statistical Office (Główny Urząd Statystyczny), the unemployment rate in Poland for January 2016 was 10.3%, which stands out as the lowest January rate in the recent 25 years.

In January there were 5,703 thousand people employed in the business sector, which is 2.3% more than in January 2015. The unemployment rate for January (10.3%) was 1.6% lower if we compare it with the same period in 2015.

Sectors that experienced hikes in employment were administration and support, information and communication, industry processing, and vehicle repair.

Unfortunately, not all economy sectors experienced growth in employment. Among those where the number of jobs decreased were mining and extraction, real estate and construction.

If we compare January data with December 2015, the unemployment rate went slightly up, as it rose by 0.5%. The number of the people registered as unemployed in January was 1647,5 thousand, which is around 84 thousand more than in December.

The highest rate of unemployment is in the Warmian-Masurian voivodeship (17.0 %), while the lowest is in the Greater Poland voivodeship (6.5%). In comparison with December, unemployment rate rose all across Poland.

54.9% of job seekers are long-term unemployed, i.e. people who have been registered as unemployed for over 12 months in the last 2 years. 51.5 % of the unemployed are women.

As to the age groups, the unemployment among the under-30s went down by 1.9 percentage point in comparison with last year, and among the under-25s by 1.5 percentage point.

The same cannot be said about the unemployed who are more than 50 years old. Among this group, unemployment went up by 1.4 percentage point.

The number of the newly-registered is lower both when we take into consideration December 2015 (a drop by 3.8%) and January 2015 (9.6%).

According to Eurostat’s Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rate in Poland in 4Q2015 was 6.9%, which is 1.2 percent lower than in the previous period.

According to the Labour Force Survey, an unemployed person is someone who is over 15, actively looking for work and available to take up work, while Central Statistical Office takes into account the number of people who have registered as unemployed.