Resilience of the Polish labour market in regions bordering Ukraine in the context of the inflow of war refugees from Ukraine
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The escalation of the war following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022 significantly intensified the outflow of the people from that country, especially across the Polish-Ukrainian border. This in many ways affected the regions bordering Ukraine, including their labour markets. The aim of the research presented in the article is to assess the resilience of the Polish labour market in regions bordering Ukraine to the effects of the war in Ukraine. It is assumed that the situation on the labour market would be illustrated by the unemployment rate and the impact of the war expressed by the influx of refugees. The research concerns NUTS 2 regions bordering Ukraine, i.e. Lubelskie and Podkarpackie voivodships. The authors hypothesise that the inflow of war refugees from Ukraine increased unemployment in the border regions. The study is based on data covering the period from 2014, namely the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict, to the end of 2022. The data were provided by the Local Data Bank of Statistics Poland. The counterfactual before-after comparison method was used. To assess the differences between the observed and the hypothetical unemployment rates, the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) index was used. The total average impact of the war on unemployment was defined as the difference between the mean values of the output variables (unemployment rate) in wartime and in a counterfactual situation. The research results show that the Polish regions bordering Ukraine were affected by the war in the form of increased unemployment rates compared to other regions in Poland where the situation on the labour market was more stable. However, it should be noted that the difference was only minor; furthermore, the model did not take into account other factors that also had an influence on the studied situation.
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4407262234