Poor labour-market outcomes remain one of Poland’s major structural weaknesses, impeding firms’ competitiveness
and the nation’s potential output. Boosting employment prospects is also critical, as the country will soon be ageing at
a fast pace. Despite long working hours, labour utilisation is only average due to structurally low employment rates,
particularly at both ends of the age spectrum, with some marked regional differences. The female employment rate is
especially low, in part due to poorly designed family and pension policies. Insufficient product-market competition
and obstacles to internal mobility induce significant resource misallocation. Employment protection is not particularly
stringent, but the labour market is nonetheless heavily segmented. This is likely to weigh on economic performance
by limiting investment in human capital and making some specific groups bear a large share of adjustment costs.
Public employment services suffer from a lack of resources and function inefficiently. Local labour offices have
limited incentives to adopt best practices; the government plans to start benchmarking them. There is ample scope to
tighten jobseeker obligations and reform social and tax policies to make work pay. This Working Paper relates to the
2014 OECD Economic Survey of Poland (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-poland.htm).
