Poland's working population will shrink by a third without migration, new study shows
Poland’s working-age population will decline by nearly a third by 2060 unless the country opens its borders to more migrants from beyond eastern Europe, according to a study by the state statistics office.
The projection reflects a dwindling birth rate and highlights political battles over opening the European Union’s sixth-largest economy to more migration. Such a drop would pile more pressure on Poland’s labor-hungry $688 billion economy and strain public finances as the number of retirees surges.
In a little less than four decades, Poland’s working-age residents could shrink by 7.1 million from 22.2 million now, according to the study. At the same time, aging populations in neighboring Ukraine and Belarus will reduce the number of workers potentially coming into Poland.
“In order to achieve higher levels of immigration, which would make it possible to at least partially compensate for the losses in the labor market, greater diversification of the countries of origin of immigrants will be necessary,” the report said. “This would mean the appearance of more people from culturally different Asian or African countries.”
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Migration is a central political issue in Poland before a general election in October, where the ruling Law & Justice party has made anti-immigrant rhetoric part of its nationalist platform. That position has collided with economic reality, as many nations in the EU’s east have quietly filled chronic job-market shortages with non-European workers.
