„Has COVID-19 Enhanced Labour Polarisation in Poland? Changes in Unmet Labour Demand Based on Online Job Offers”

This chapter identifies the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Polish labour market, covering a 95-week period since the first COVID-19 case in Poland was reported and a similar period before the pandemic outburst. Recently, online job postings have been utilised to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on labour demand. In general, perceptive contraction in the scale of job offers published online was reported at the outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data on online job postings used in this study were retrieved from the System of Online Job Offers, developed by the Institute of Labour and Social Studies in Warsaw, which is a public research institute. Labour market reaction was driven to some extent by lockdowns aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. The demand effect for routine cognitive and non-routine cognitive analytical tasks was smaller, but also positive. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to perceptible changes in all dimensions of socio-economic life.