International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Any evaluation of the scale of employment in Poland by seasonal workers employed on
the basis of declarations may be only a rough estimate, because only the declarations -
and not actual employment - are registered. As an example, in 2011 almost 260,000
of such declarations were registered (Table 8.3). At the same time, verification on
the basis of issued visas and registered border crossings allow for an assessment that
approximately 150,000 migrants undertook employment in Poland. Ukrainians are
responsible for a vast majority (approximately 92%) of migrants taking this kind of
employment. In the last two years there has been also an increase in the number
of registered declarations issued for citizens of Moldova. The scale of employment
of Russians, Belarusians and Georgians remains at a very moderate level of several
thousand.
Table 8.1: Work Permits requested and issued in Poland from 2004 to 2011
Year Number of
applications
Number of issued permits
New Extended Total
2004 18,325 6,971 5,410 12,381
2005 16,921 5,905 4,399 10,304
2006 14,181 6,629 4,125 10,754
2007 16,024 7,667 4,486 12,153
2008 25,500 12,390 5,632 18,022
2009* 29,392 20,806 8,534 29,340
2010 37,121 N.A.** N.A.** 32,126
2011 42,268 32,519 8,289 40,808
Source: Author’s compilation based on the data from the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy.
Notes: * The act on employment promotion and labour market institutions, which liberalized the rules
governing the issuing of work permits, came into force on 1st February 2009.
** There are no data for 2010 due to change of reporting forms.
Table 8.2: Work permits issued to citizens of the member states of the eastern
partnership (type A permits)
Year Country
Ukraine Belarus Moldova Georgia Azerbaijan Armenia
2007 3,851 855 971 62 21 304
2008 5,400 1,325 1,218 109 19 441
2009 9,504 1,669 601 143 37 619
2010 13,150 1,958 682 95 45 452
2011 18,523 1,385 1,042 173 53 465
Source: Author’s compilation based on the data from the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy.
country studIes – POLAND
131