How Ukrainians became the driver of Poland's economy

There is a direct connection between Poland’s economic miracle and Ukrainian workers, which is only strengthened by the influx of war refugees in need of work.

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43-year-old Olena Scherbanivska from Kyiv went to Poland in March of 2022 with her three children. She worked as a financial manager at Ukraine’s Veres food conglomerate before the war. Now she has a job in an accounting office in Nowy Targ in southern Poland, not far from the resort town of Zakopane.

"Initially, I was registered for an internship by the local employment office, and when I completed it, I applied for an official job," says Shcherbanivska.

She currently earns the minimum monthly wage of 2,783 zlotys (approximately 25,500 UAH, or $670). But this money and her child welfare payments (500 zlotys, 4,500 UAH, or around $120) are not enough.

"We need to pay for housing, boarding school for my older son, kindergarten for my younger one, food, medicine, travel, and also utility bills in Kyiv. The costs are high," she explains.

On the other hand, she says, her earnings will grow as she gains experience and improves her Polish language skills. Thus, she is working not only for today, but for the future.

And there are plenty of such workers in Poland today: currently, according to various estimates, there are 2 million Ukrainians in the country. Most of them are employed in one way or another, thereby helping to grow the local economy.

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Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainians had significantly increased the workforce in the Polish labor market. Before the war, almost 1.5 million Ukrainian citizens had jobs in Poland — from seasonal workers to permanent ones, says Andrzej Korkus, chairman of the board of EWL Group.

"According to the National Bank of Poland, the contribution of Ukrainian migration to Poland's GDP growth in 2014-2018 was as much as 11%!" he adds.

After February 2022, Ukrainian labor migrants were also joined by refugees. According to Gremi Personal, an international employment company, there are currently 739,000 Ukrainians working officially in Poland. In 2021, according to Poland’s Central Statistics Office, there were only 325,000. At the same time, Ukrainians are now the number one foreign nationality in the Polish labor market.

"The majority of Ukrainian citizens living in Poland are currently women who have children and who often work in positions below their qualifications," adds Korkus.

But the growing Polish economy is also absorbing these human resources.

People from the east

EWL Group and the University of Warsaw’s Center for East European Studies ventured to take a closer look at Ukrainians who have ended up in Poland.

Their research this year showed that only 4% of adults from Ukraine who moved to Poland are beyond working age. More than half of those who are currently in the country’s capital have a higher or incomplete higher education, and one in three has a professional and technical education (32 %). In addition, slightly more than a third know the Polish language at a good or very good level. Almost 80% of Ukrainians in Poland are employed.

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At the same time, more than half of Ukrainian citizens working in Poland would recommend employment in this country to their friends and relatives.

"Almost two-thirds of survey respondents are migrants who arrived in Poland before Feb. 24, 2022 (60 %), and a bit more than a third are war refugees who arrived after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine (40 %)," the EWL report explains.

39-year-old Kateryna Vinnyk belongs to the latter category. She has a degree in economics, and before the war worked as an advertising sales manager. In March of 2022, she found herself in the town of Orneta in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland’s northeast.

"The town is small, and there are no industrial enterprises. It is very difficult to find a job without knowing the language. I was glad for any opportunity to earn money," she says.

She has a job as a cleaner, which was provided by the city administration. "My friend found a place in a bakery cutting and packing bread six nights a week. The salary, like mine, is minimal. Hours are 10:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.," Vinnyk adds.

Women's lot

According to Anna Jobolda, director of the recruitment department of Gremi Personal, the key trend of the labor market in Poland is a noticeable lack of men. It is most difficult to fill jobs traditionally held by them, as well as those that require additional qualifications, like welders, carpenters, and electricians.

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The increase in the share of women with children among Ukrainians in Poland has posed a challenge for the local labor market, experts say. After all, before the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian migrant workers were generally men who found work in key sectors of the economy like manufacturing, construction, logistics, and transport. Currently, some of them have left, and potential employees  much more likely to be women has prompted employers to adjust workplaces accordingly if possible, such as by introducing more flexible schedules, providing help in placing children in educational institutions, and even speeding up automation processes.

"For example, employers which have production lines where it is necessary to lift loads, say up to 20 kg, have automated them by bringing in some additional machines," says Maria Kuzenko, head of the legalization department at EWL.

Lyudmila Martynyuk, 45, from Dnipro, is an economist with a degree. Before the full-scale invasion, she had worked for a long time with a Ukrainian cosmetics manufacturer. But the company’s plant in Kharkiv stopped operations.

"I had a good job and a company car. The war started, and my husband and I lost our jobs," says Martynyuk. For some time, her family did volunteer work, but after six months, Martynyuk left for Poland with her friend in search of income. "We decided to try. We had never worked with our hands or standing in a factory before," she admits.

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With the help of a foreign employment company, the women first arrived at a car seat belt factory near Wrocław, working eight-hour shifts.

"We worked there from September to December. I received about 2.4 thousand zlotys [21,900 UAH, $580],” says Lyudmila.

"But we wanted to earn more and be closer to our children studying in Lublin," so the women moved to the city of Starachowice, getting a job through the same company at a factory that produces electrical wiring for large cars. For more than half a year, Martynyuk managed to work various jobs, willingly taking on extra hours. Working 12-hour shifts, her earnings reached almost 5 thousand zlotys (45,600 UAH, $1,210), of which approximately 400 zlotys (3,600 UAH, $97) went to food, and 350 zlotys (3,200 UAH, $85) to pay for a bed in a hostel, she says. "Decent income," she summarizes.

Looking for quick employment

On average, there are about 14,000 job searches for Ukrainians on the Polish version of the international job search site Jooble every month. The largest numbers are in the cities of Katowice, Szczecin and Wroclaw, explains Jooble analyst Victoria Novosad.

According to her, the service and healthcare industries have the largest number of search queries. As for specific vacancies, Ukrainians most often want to be employed as drivers of various types, in social care, or engage in seasonal agriculture work.

"Also, people are often looking for jobs with quick employment, part-time jobs, or just any well-paid jobs," adds Novosad.

Even in winter, according to the expert, more work was sought by women. In the summer period, searches for work "for students" and "part-time work for minors" are popular. There are also lots of openings in supermarket chains like Biedronka and Lidl.

There is always a shortage of seasonal workers in Poland, says Kuzenko from EWL.

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"We are still being approached with various requests: one company needs 300 workers ‘yesterday,’ another needs 500 ‘for tomorrow.’ This signals that there is a need here — both for men and women," she says.

On the part of Polish employers, Ukrainians currently have an average of 5,000 vacancies available on the Jooble platform every month, most of them in Warsaw, Krakow, and Wroclaw.

"In winter, a larger number of vacancies for Ukrainians in Poland concerned job offers in stores / supermarkets, in sales, and with warehouse administration," says Novosad.

At the same time, in the summer months, there are more vacancies in the fields of production and construction: they are looking for mechanics, electricians, builders, welders, and the like.

"As of July, popular vacancies in Poland for Ukrainians include offers for seasonal work in restaurant and hospitality," she adds.

There are also many offers for drivers of various categories and delivery drivers. Vacancies for white-collar workers, like software developers or project managers, are less abundant, Novosad explains.

At the same time, Ukrainians are increasingly beginning to occupy more highly qualified positions, notes Anna Jobolda from Gremi Personal.

"Our compatriots are also starting to work in IT, sales, HR, management, personnel work, and finance," she says.

She connects this not only with the Ukrainians’ increasing integration in Poland, but also with the fact that many Ukrainian businesses have started working on the local market and are hiring their compatriots for various positions. "Ukrainian businesses that open here primarily hire Ukrainians," Jobolda explains.

The three most popular vacancies at Gremi Personal are currently line cook, produce picker, and assistant cook. The service sector also dominates the top ten.

"These are the vacancies that are most often chosen by our clients when they contact us for work. Our company recruits from 80 to 200 people a day," explains Jobolda. According to her, the most vacancies are in the field of food industry and logistics, like packaging.

According to Jobolda, approximately 60-70% of those who come to Poland after the full-scale invasion start working without knowing the language, so they mostly choose low-skilled professions.

"But we are also seeing another trend. Before the war, the majority of Ukrainian wage earners did not actively study the language, and now almost 80% of them are immediately taking up Polish," she adds. In her opinion, this is due to the desire to integrate and later get a more qualified job.

A growing market

Even despite the increased flow of Ukrainians who were forced to flee from the war, Polish companies still lack workers. "They are still actively looking for them and opening new markets," says Kuzenko from EWL. — The Polish economy is developing. It is a ‘sponge’ that can soak up a lot of human capital."

Even in the industrial sector, in logistics and areas that do not require any particular work experience or skills, there are still many unfilled jobs, she adds.

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Poland's economy is really gaining momentum. The standard of living in Wroclaw or Warsaw is comparable to Berlin, Paris, or London, according to a recent article by UK’s The Telegraph. Its authors highlight the fact that GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in Poland has already reached $35,600. This figure is $44,200 in the UK, $43,100 in France, and $ 50,200 in Germany.

"On the current trajectory, Poland will overtake Great Britain by 2030," the article concluded.

The Polish market, with its approximately 9 million employed people, has an unemployment rate of only 2.9%, which is half the European average (5.9%). Moreover, according to the Occupational Barometer 2022 study, it is in dire need of a variety of construction workers, medical workers (from nurses to psychotherapists), electricians, fitters, carpenters, welders, as well as cooks, bakers, transport and logistics workers, and even accountants. After all, the national economy is growing: GDP in 2022 will reach $688 billion (20th place in the world), having increased by 4.9%.

At the same time, the competition for labor in the EU has not disappeared even despite the migration crisis caused by the war. In addition to Poland, a number of other European countries have also opened their doors to Ukrainians. In Germany, there are now seven times more Ukrainians in the country than there were before 2022: by the beginning of 2023, there were 1 million Ukrainians on the banks of the Rhine.

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At the same time, Poland is not always managing to keep Ukrainians. For example, 32-year-old Oleksandra Puzan, who specializes in video game sound design, spent three months in Warsaw, but is now in Montreal, Canada.

In total, 24% of EWL migrants from Ukraine who were interviewed were looking for employment opportunities outside of Poland during the last year: the majority were interested in Germany, and one in four was interested in the Czech Republic.

In addition, many Ukrainians who left their homes after Feb. 24, 2022, are returning home.

Therefore, experts are sure that Poland will continue to need workers from the east. They will become one of the drivers of the country’s economic growth.

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In 1998, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton said: "America is constantly gaining strength and spirit from the arrival of wave after wave of immigrants." It seems that this is something that a future president of Poland may one day say, but with reference to Ukrainian workers.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine