The regional structure of unemployment in Poland

Authors:

• Teresa Czyż

Abstract

Unemployment is a new social phenomenon in Poland brought by a radical reconstruction of the socio-economic system. In the first quarter of 1991 the national unemployment rate reach 7%. It is highly diversified spatially and grows fast. In the regional structure of the unemployment rate two patterns with the highest figures can be distinguished: that of north-eastern Poland, extending towards its mid-western part, and that of western Poland. Lowest unemployment rates are characteristic of the Warsaw, Cracow and Poznan voivodeships. The study of the relationships between unemployment and the socio-economic structure of the regions has been made in two stages. The first is devoted to deriving significant dimensions of the regional structure using the principal components analysis. The second is devoted to the determination of the strength of the relationships between the type of socio-economic structure, the position of regions in the hierarchy of the regional system, and their resistance to unemployment. It is also concerned with a detailed analysis of deviations from the urban-industrial structure - low unemployment rate relation. -English summary