Convergence on local labour markets in Poland

Abstract

The purpose of presented study was to verify a hypothesis of convergence on local labor markets in Poland. Convergence phenomenon, understood as economic development levels balancing (falling differentiation) has been known since the mid- 1950s. In Poland the convergence problems have been a specific subject of research since the accession to the European Union and the implementation of cohesion policy whose financing is largely related to compensating some imbalances within the Polish regions, i.e. achieving convergence. Some earlier studies show that the outside conver- gence process (understood as reducing the distance of Poland’s development in relation to the EU) does occur, whereas inside convergence processes (understood as reducing the development distance between the regions of Poland) do not occur. This pessimistic conclusion concerns studies on economic growth in the regions (e.g. using GDP base), and below we show that the hypothesis of convergence on local labor markets in Poland could be positively verified. This conclusion was derived on the basis of standard tools which are used to verify a beta and sigma type of convergence and statistical data for the period 1999-2008 taken from Labor Force Survey.