Poland
Polish economic refugees and the Polish economy
Classified Polnews
Warsaw, Poland August 16, 2006. There are, depending on the source of the figures, 500,000 to 1 million people who have left Poland to work either illegally or legally in Western European countries. Some of these people have left permanently and others commute between Poland and their Western place of work.
The most visible impact of the departure of these economic refugees is the reduction in the Polish unemployment rate. Their departure has reduced the number of people on the unemployment roll in Poland and has allowed Polish on unemployment to dip to approximately 15%.
Those people who are commuting between a Western job and their family in Poland are bringing significant amounts of money back into Poland which is helping to keep the economy stimulated. These people are making some times as much as five times more per month as they could in Poland and that money is coming back into the Polish economy.
Those who have left the country permanently have an offsetting impact on the overall economy in that their purchasing power is permanently removed from the country. These people are no longer in the housing market, no longer buy fast-moving consumer goods and are no longer candidates to buy major goods such as new cars.
It has recently been reported that new car sales and Poland have dropped. The cause of the drop has been accredited to excise taxes and large numbers of used cars coming in from Western Europe. No mention has been made of a reduction in the number of new car buyers that are in the market.
The economic refugees are generally people in their younger years and are thosde who would be expected to be purchasing cars, flats, and all those things that young family people would be purchasing. They have left behind those people who are settled and less likely to be on an upward buying curve.
Economic refugees from the new entrants into the European Union are starting to cause concern for some of the country's whose economies are being impacted by the large number of people who are entering their job markets. The situation is such, for example, that the United Kingdom is looking at limiting immigration from new entrants to the European Union.
At some point the number of people that can be absorbed into the job market's in the various Western European Union countries will reach a saturation point. When that happens the number of people that have left the Polish job market will reach a maximum and there should be a certain amount of exchange as some return to Poland and others leave in search of opportunity. At that time the overall impact of the loss of the people from Poland will be able be measured.
In the meantime, however, with the constant outflow of people and no fix on the numbers as to how many people have actually left the country and how many people are commuting, valid projections do not exist and the real impact on the economy is really an unknown.
If You Did Not Find What You Want Here, Use This Search Box
