Ever more foreigners want to work in Poland

Some 235,600 work permit were issued last year to foreigners in Poland, with the number expected to be higher this year. The figure is almost twice that of 2016 with 81.7 percent of permits going to Ukrainians.

The figures were announced during a press conference entitled 'Support for the integration of foreigners in the Silesia province' organised within the framework of a project co-financed with money from the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

In Silesia, from January to September this year, the province governor issued 14,800 work permits, at the end of 2017 the figure was 23,000. For comparison, in 2015 there were 2,000 and in 2016, 7,000.

In addition to Ukrainians, ever larger groups are coming to Poland to work from India, Bangladesh and Nepal - in all, by September this year, 1,300 work permits had been issued to them.

"Thanks to a very low unemployment rate and dynamic development of the Polish economy, opportunities have opened up for foreigners in the job market," Silesia province governor Jarosław Wieczorek announced. "An example is that in the years 2015-2017, the most commonly appearing occupation of requests was drivers: in 2015, 919 applications were submitted, in 2016 there were a thousand more and in 2017 there were 4,051 applications for permission to work in our province."

Marcin Flaczyński, director of the District Labour Office in Będzin, explained that for the same work, Ukrainians can earn three to five times as much in Poland as in their own country. In construction, pay is 390 percent higher in Poland than in Ukraine while the work of cashiers and sales assistants pays four times as much and in logistics and transport the difference is threefold.