Around 4 mln Poles consider moving to W. Europe for work: report

Around four million Poles are considering moving to western Europe for work and 1.5 million of them have already decided to leave, according to a report released by Work Service employment agency on Tuesday.

The major group thinking of leaving the country to seek employment abroad are young people from the eastern part of the country, especially those living in smaller towns, and people with lower education levels. Eastern Poland is the most severely affected by unemployment, with considerably lower level of investment in the region as well. The report showed that the decision to migrate for work was mostly made by the people living in villages (38 percent) and in towns with populations below 100,000 people (33 percent).

Meanwhile, a total of 19 percent of people actively looking for work consider leaving the county to search for job abroad, an increase of four percent from last year.

According to the report, the main motivation for emigrating is the hope of a higher salary or higher standard of living Western Europe. The most common destinations respondents wanted to move to were Germany (34 percent), Great Britain (18 percent), Holland (6 percent) and Spain (5 percent).

The main group of considering labor migration were people up to 35 years old (62 percent). Most of them said they would leave temporarily, with only 17.4 percent saying they were prepared to move abroad permanently.

According to research conducted by the country's Central Statistics Office (GUS) in 2015, around 2.3 million Poles were registered as temporarily living and working abroad. Facing an ever-increasing emigration trend, the gap in the Polish job market is often filled with migrants from the Ukraine and other countries. Endit