Bożena Karwat Woźniak

Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics – National Research Institute ierigz@ierigz.waw.pl

Employment and the Extent of Labour Resources in Individual Farming in Poland – Change Tendencies under the Conditions of Increasing Competition

Abstract: The key problem of agriculture in Poland is the excessive employment in this sector. Activation of necessary structural changes is connected, inter alia, with limiting the population of persons employed in individual holdings. That is why an evaluation of changes in the professional activity of farming population and employment in family farms. The scale of unemployment among farming population constitutes an important element of the paper, especially hidden unemployment - not only for social reasons, but also from the methodological point of view. Therefore the paper presents not only the scale of hidden unemployment, but also ways of estimating the range and impact of the phenomenon.

The paper makes use mainly of the results of long-term field research of the IAFE-NRI conducted in the same 76 villages, in all individual farms located in these villages. It has been established that market processes of restructuring the economy have lead to the need to rationalise employment, and in consequence, to the regress of labour needs. Negative effects of these tendencies in individual farming include mainly ineffective employment and structural unemployment. These negative effects have gradually subsided as the processes of the adjustment of the economy to the requirements of a competitive market progressed and as the labour market changed for better. Still, despite the relatively high diversification of professional activity of farming population and rationalisation of employment in agricultural holdings, this segment is still characterised by excessive employment and high scale of unused labour resources (17% - rate of unnecessary workers).

Keywords:employment of farming population, labour in agriculture, workload, open unemployment, hidden unemployment