Polish Labour Market on a Local Scale in the Period of Transformation (with regard to Rzeszow)
Polish Labour Market on a Local Scale in the Period of Transformation (with regard to Rzeszow)

Summary/Abstract: When analysed in the context of the local labour market, the processes of transformation taking place in Poland provide an interesting example of the changes occurring in the 90s of 20th century. In the case of medium-size cities, such as Rzeszow, it becomes even more valuable, as it concerns the place which underwent a quick process of industrialization in the period of socialism and where the national industry became the cornerstone of its economy. The transformation and the difficulties in the functioning of public enterprises meant serious problems for the emerging local labour market. The number of jobs drastically decreased and the unemployment quickly increased. After three years, the unemployment rate was 18%. Together with the emergence of unemployment there was a noticeable reduction of the indicator of professional activity of the citizens and the drop in the employment rate. Thanks to the development of the private sector the number of jobs began to slowly increase in 1992 and, in the following years, the positive economic tendencies allowed to fully reconstruct the potential of the local labour market towards the end of the 90s. However, it took longer to reverse the negative tendencies of the unemployment dynamics in the city. Unemployment began to decrease significantly as late as in the mid-90s when the entitlements to benefit were taken away from school graduates. This limited the number of the registered unemployed. Within a few years, the number of job seekers went down by over a half and the unemployment rate was only 8% in 1998. Despite those positive changes, the unemployment structure was very unfavourable. The majority of the unemployed were young people with poor education and without any work experience. The majority of them were out of work for more than a year. Generally, the situation on the local labour market seemed to be rather good after ten years of transformation. However, it was still unstable which resulted in the economic slow-down at the turn of the century, the consequence of which was another quick increase of unemployment.

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