Statistics Poland (GUS) said on 8 September 2026 that 1.153 million foreign nationals were working in Poland on the final day of March. The total was 85,700 higher than in March 2025, an increase of 8.0 per cent. It also rose by 20,200, or 1.8 per cent, from 28 February 2026.
The figures form part of GUS’s experimental statistics on foreigners performing work in Poland. They indicate that the country’s international workforce continued to expand at the beginning of 2026, despite separate evidence that demand for labour was cooling slightly.
Why it matters
Foreign workers have become a substantial part of Poland’s available labour pool. For companies recruiting internationally in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, Tricity and Poznań, the national figures provide context for staffing decisions and the growing use of cross-border recruitment.
The data are also relevant to foreign employees considering relocation. However, the total number of foreigners already working in Poland does not, by itself, indicate how readily a particular applicant can obtain a job or immigration permission. Eligibility depends on circumstances not covered by the GUS release.
GUS recorded workers from more than 150 countries. Ukrainians remained by far the largest nationality group, with approximately 783,900 people working in Poland at the end of March. They accounted for about 68 per cent of the total foreign workforce.
This concentration means that the overall headline remains closely tied to Ukrainian participation in the labour market. At the same time, the presence of workers from more than 150 countries shows that international employment extends well beyond a single nationality, although the brief does not provide a complete country-by-country breakdown.
Men represented 59.9 per cent of foreign workers, compared with 40.1 per cent for women. The number of workers in both groups increased by slightly more than 8 per cent from March 2025, suggesting that the annual rise was broadly distributed between male and female workers rather than being driven by only one group.
Employment status is another important part of the picture. Around 437,700 foreigners, equivalent to approximately 38 per cent of the total, worked exclusively under contracts of mandate and related civil-law arrangements.
An umowa zlecenia (contract of mandate) is a civil-law contract rather than a standard employment contract. The scale of its use among foreign workers shows how significant these arrangements are to Poland’s staffing model. The GUS figures do not specify how the proportion varies by nationality, occupation, sector or city.
The statistics also cover more than payroll employees. Since January 2025, GUS has included owners, co-owners and leaseholders of private agricultural holdings, together with contributing family members, in its measure of foreigners performing work. Readers comparing the latest figures with older releases therefore need to check whether the statistical scope is consistent.
The rise in foreign workers comes alongside a modest decline in Poland’s job vacancy rate. GUS reported that the rate stood at 0.80 per cent at the end of the second quarter of 2026, down by 0.01 percentage points from the previous quarter.
The two measures describe different aspects of the labour market. The foreign-worker figures count people performing work at a specific date, while the vacancy rate measures unfilled positions in relation to jobs. Taken together, they suggest that the international workforce is still growing while the proportion of vacancies has edged lower.
The March publication provides a national overview and does not contain city-level figures in the information supplied. It therefore cannot establish how much of the increase occurred in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, Tricity or Poznań, nor whether particular sectors accounted for most of the monthly growth.
What to watch next
- Whether subsequent GUS releases show the foreign workforce continuing to grow from the March total of 1.153 million, or whether the monthly pace begins to slow.
- Whether Ukraine’s approximately 68 per cent share changes as employment among workers from other countries expands or contracts.
- Whether the job vacancy rate continues to decline after reaching 0.80 per cent in the second quarter, and whether that movement coincides with slower growth in foreign employment.
