Unemployment — a socially painful stage in the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy: The case of Poland

Abstract

The article presents the results of research on the structure of unemployment in Poland at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, described in terms of both kind and spatial variation, by the 49 voivodeships (administrative districts) of the country, using multivariate statistical analysis. The work starts with an analysis of the rise in unemployment over the last few years, since the departure from the centrally controlled economy which was claimed, for ideological reasons, to be free from this problem and which, in fact, was concealing it in its ineffective structures. Unemployment is also related to another factor responsible for the destabilization of the economy, namely inflation. The article closes with a multivariate delimitation of regional labour markets. Although the study is only concerned with Poland, the high unemployment level as a socially painful phenomenon is a feature of the economies of all the post‐Communist countries of Europe.