EU’s most mobile workforce not moving abroad as home jobs beckon

POLISH workers, for years the most mobile in the European Union, are losing their interest in moving abroad amid a renaissance on the nation’s job market.

A survey by Warsaw-based recruiting and human services provider Work Service showed on Wednesday that the number of Polish workers considering emigration dropped by more than a quarter in the past year. Among those willing to work abroad, the UK returned as the most sought-after destination, signalling a potential last wave of migrants seeking jobs in Britain before the island nation exits the EU, according to the study.

Since Poland joined the world’s biggest trading bloc in 2004, an estimated two million Poles moved to other EU nations in a bid to improve job prospects and increase salaries. But with Poland’s US$477 billion economy expanding four per cent, unemployment at a postcommunist low of 7.7 per cent and salaries rising more than five per cent in the last 12 months, the incentive to uproot and move is declining, especially for the better educated, Work Service said.

“To a large extent, this is an effect of improving conditions on the Polish labour market,” Maciej Witucki, chief executive officer at Work Service, said in an emailed statement.

Over the past 12 months, the number of Poles considering emigration dropped by five percentage points to 13.7 per cent, according to the survey. More than a third of workers aren’t considering emigration because of “attractive work conditions” in Poland, it said.

Even as the number of potential emigrants is shrinking, it still represents a pool of about 2.8 million people, or nine per cent of the nation’s adult population. — WP-Bloomberg