The impact of minimum wage on employment in Poland

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to verify the hypothesis that minimum wage might have negative impact on employment in Poland, at least for some workers groups and regions. After having reviewed theoretical literature on minimum wage and having discussed stylized facts on labour market in Poland, the authors define econometric model to check the impact of minimum wage on employment in Poland and then discuss the results. The main conclusions of the study may be summarized as follows: i) minimum wage has had an adverse impact on employment in 1999-2010; ii) the adverse effect of minimum wage on employment has been pronounced for the young workers during the period of substantial increase of the minimum wage (2005-2010), and iii) there is some evidence that a uniform national minimum wage may be particularly harmful to employment in poorest regions.

Keywords

• Minimum wage
• employment