Job offers in Poland, August 2026: more ads, fewer jobs

In my commentary for the report, I set the growth in job offers against employment data. According to Statistics Poland (in Polish), average employment in the enterprise sector was 0.8% lower in July than a year earlier. Preliminary data from Poland’s Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, as reported by Bankier.pl (in Polish), show 911,000 people registered as unemployed in August, 54,700 more than a year before, with the unemployment rate up to 5.9%. Given that job offers rose by 4% over the same period, the question I raise is whether more ads alongside lower employment mostly reflect turnover, with companies refilling positions vacated by people who left.

I am not certain about that. Grant Thornton notes in the report that job offers run about two months ahead of GUS employment data, because recruitment and a notice period sit between a job ad and a first day at work. If the June and July growth in offers turns into jobs, we will see it in the GUS readings this fall. If it does not, turnover becomes the simplest explanation.

The second signal is that job offers are getting leaner. Fewer benefits, and training promised in fewer than half of ads compared with more than 80% a few years ago, are bad news for juniors, since companies are giving up on investing in people. This brings me back to a topic I have written about many times on this blog: things keep getting harder for people entering the job market, and plenty of data confirms that AI is taking over the simple tasks juniors used to start with. Fresh numbers on this came out in August from the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. A revised version of the study by Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen, based on ADP payroll data, shows that employment among 22- to 25-year-olds in highly AI-exposed occupations is now about 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with peers in less exposed occupations. A year earlier, the gap was 15%.

The authors caution that they are describing patterns, not causal estimates, and that they see no widespread, economy-wide displacement of workers. What matters more to me is how, in their reading, the gap forms: mainly through companies hiring fewer young people rather than through more layoffs. In my commentary on the July report, I asked to what extent AI, cited as a reason for layoffs in the US, was a real cause and to what extent an excuse. In August, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI fell from first to fourth place among the reasons, with 3,462 of 52,881 announced cuts, ending a five-month run at the top. Year to date, it still leads, with 116,175 cuts. In my view, that explains why both readings can be true at once: a job nobody was hired into does not show up in any layoff report.

Nor is there any comfort in what is happening with interest rates and oil. The European Central Bank raised interest rates by 25 basis points on September 10, bringing the deposit rate to 2.50% effective September 16. The Fed announces its decision on September 16, and some economists expect its first hike since July 2023. A barrel of Brent crude cost about $106 on September 14. Accordingly, there will be no cheap capital for hiring.