Young people out of work?

Unemployment in Poland has one of the lowest rates in years - despite this, young unemployed people are arriving. Why?

The situation of young people in Poland is not the best, or so the data say - in 2024, according to the Central Statistical Office, the unemployment rate of young Poles (15-34 years) was 5.1%. It was immediately higher compared to the general population (15-89 years) where the rate was 2.9%. In the recently published modular study “Young people on the labor market”, carried out as part of the Survey of Economic Activity of the Population (BAEL) in 2024, we will find out, among others, that the professional activity of young people is diverse, but the reasons for the lack of this activity are usually the ambition associated with continuing education. The older the people in the group classified as “young” are, the less their professional passivity. Most often, economic inactivity affects people who are either studying or moving from the education system to the labor market. What is important - the data come from the module “Young people on the labor market”, implemented within the framework of BAEL, which emphasizes that these are survey data based on professional activity, not registers of employment offices.

Unemployed young people in the European Union

When we look at the current Eurostat data, it looks even different. According to Eurostat data from May 2025, the unemployment rate among young people (15-24 years) in Poland amounted to 13.5%, which means an increase of 27.4% year-on-year. Such a high rate is due to among others. from the fact that a relatively small proportion of young people are (professionally active many of them study or study), therefore the unemployed make up a significant percentage of this active group. It is worth emphasising that Eurostat's methodology differs from the national one in that it uses the so-called harmonised unemployment rate (HUR), based on uniform EU criteria, which makes it possible to compare data between Member States.

In July 2025, the youth unemployment rate was 14.4% in the EU, compared to 14.8% in June 2025, and 13.9% in the euro area. Italy has the highest number of unemployed young people in the European Union. In May last year, according to Eurostat data, it was 20.6%, and in May of this year - 21.6%. Despite all the differences in methodology, periods and age groups, one trend emerges - we can observe an increase in unemployment among young Poles. However, it is worth looking at the causes.

Young People: Ambitions and Realities

The passivity of young people? It sounds like a lack of ambition - but if we look more closely at the cause we will see something that is quite characteristic of both the younger generation and our labour market. The GUS data show a clear tension between formal education and the professional activity of young people - pupils and students rarely take up work (19.4% professionally active), while those in further education outside the system almost always combine education with employment (84%.). This is due to the different organization; studies and formal schools require time, presence and systematicity, which limits flexibility in the labor market, while courses or training are an addition to an already existing career. The problem is that the lack of a diploma or specialized qualifications closes the way to better positions, so young people are faced with a choice: enter the market faster at the expense of education or study longer at the expense of work experience. This leads to social inequality, because people from wealthier families can afford to study “clean”, and the rest have to give up their education more quickly in order to earn money. In the background, we have a capitalist market that rewards efficiency and immediate readiness to work, while the ambitions of young people and the need for specialized education are shattered by the lack of flexibility of the education system.

At the same time, according to data from the Central Statistical Office, young people, having obtained a very good education, continue to work in positions that are lower than this education would provide. Which indicates that we have problems not only with the labor market as such, but also with the recruitment processes and the “catching” of talent. Although 85.4% of people aged 15-34 had an education corresponding to or higher than the requirements of their main job, the data show clear discrepancies: 85.3% of professionals had a consistent level of education and 6.6% had qualifications exceeding the requirements, while among those performing simple jobs, as many as 29.9% had higher education than required. At the same time, 27.5% of people dropped out of formal education because of the programme itself, indicating a low flexibility and mismatch of the education system to real needs. Especially since in the group up to 34 years of age alone we have 2.2 million people with higher education (mostly women - 59.6%), whose potential is not always reflected in the labor market. As a result, young people, despite high ambitions and investment in science, often end up in positions below their qualifications, revealing a systemic problem of mismatch between education and the labour market and insufficient use of human capital.

Activities of cities: the example of Warsaw

In July 2025, 21.1 thousand unemployed people were registered on the Warsaw labor market, which is 5.5% more than a month earlier (which is in line with the upward trend observed since May) This increase is explained by among others. the influx of graduates after graduation, although at the same time the number of deregistrations due to employment is increasing (77% of the total). Labour Office m.st. Warsaw also recorded an increase in the number of job offers, and since July, regulations have been in force obliging some employers to publish advertisements on job.gov.pl. At the same time, the office is seeking additional funds from the Labour Fund to support two particularly vulnerable groups - young people under 30 and the long-term unemployed - by offering them among others. internships and grants for own business. Although the July data indicate rising unemployment in the capital and in the country, experts emphasize that a more complete assessment of the situation will have to wait until autumn, when new recruitment processes will start.

Vocational activation of young people

There are many programs that support young people in the labor market. The program “Vocational activation of unemployed young people (18-29 years old) -support for entrepreneurial development” offers young people a comprehensive path out of unemployment: from competence diagnosis and career counseling, through training (including digital and business), to one-time grants for starting their own business - up to six times the average salary. There are also other initiatives supporting young people throughout the country: regional and local activation programmes (“Youth for Start”, “Activation of unemployed young people”, projects implemented by OHP or district employment offices), under which young people receive internships, subsidized employment, settlement vouchers or support in creating career paths. In addition, the national strategy “Youth Guarantee” is a systemic framework implemented in cooperation with employment offices, trainers, employers and NGOs, reducing activation time to several months and targeting assistance also to people not formally registered with the offices. However, is this enough? It seems that the job, even if it is, does not reach potential candidates. Why? There can be many reasons - the offer is simply too weak, most of them are in large cities, and sometimes the problem becomes the system of posting announcements or the recruitment system itself.

How to facilitate the recruitment process?

Access time to received CVs in Jobs Door ATS (ability to quickly and easily view applications in the system, with the option to sort by criteria such as required qualifications or experience).
Visualization of the recruitment process (graphic representation of recruitment stages, such as CV selection, job interviews or hiring decisions, which allows better monitoring of progress).
Ability to use your own ATS (integration with recruitment management systems that employers already have, allowing data synchronization between systems).
Application management in Kanban methodology (an intuitive way to manage candidate applications using Kanban boards that allow you to easily move applications between different stages of the recruitment process, e.g. “Accepted”, “Promising”, “Rejected”).

These functionalities not only facilitate the recruitment process, but also allow for a more transparent and effective management of candidacies.

summary

Unemployment among young Poles is on the rise, despite the fact that the overall rate remains one of the lowest in Europe. The main cause is the tension between formal education and professional activity and the mismatch of qualifications with the requirements of the labor market. Effective activation of young people requires not only support programmes, but also improvement of recruitment processes and better use of the potential of this group.

Sources