Differentiation of the level and nature of unemployment in the poviats of the Wielkopolskie voivodeship

Abstract

The aim of the study is to present the differentiation of the poviats’ labor markets in the Wielkopolskie voivodeship in terms of the level of unemployment rates and the nature of unemployment, as well as to determine the most important factors influencing the two variables. The nature of the unemployment was characterized by the indicator of the intensity of flows between the employment stock and unemployment stock. The research is based on the annual data for the years 2010–2021. The data were derived from the Local Data Bank of the Statistics Poland and reports of poviat labor offices (MRPiPS-01 forms). In the study, the poviats of the Wielkopolskie voivodship were grouped taking into account the unemployment rate and the indicator of the intensity of flows between the employment and unemployment stocks. The analysis allows for assessing the dynamic or stagnant nature of unemployment. In the next part of the study, two econometric models were built to verify the significance of the effects of selected factors determining the nature of unemployment. The two explained variables were the indicator of the intensity of flows of unemployed persons and the unemployment rate, separately. The study shows that although the Wielkopolskie voivodeship was characterized by one of the lowest unemployment rates in Poland, internally it was quite heterogeneous. The relatively most challenging situation, due to the unemployment rate and the intensity of flows between unemployment stock and employment stock, was in the poviat koniński, while the most advantageous situation concerned poviats: poznański, the city of Poznań, nowotomyski and wolsztyński. The empirical approach showed that the highest elasticities of the explained variables were estimated in relation to the number of registered entities per 10 thousand inhabitants, which indicated that this determinant was important for shaping the nature of the labour market. Moreover, the effect of the pandemic year 2020 was important for the situation on labour market.