Wage rollercoaster in Poland loses momentum in August
Another month, another surprise in wage data. This time, the wage rollercoaster swung to the downside, with wage growth slowing to 5.6% yoy, almost 1 percentage point below the consensus forecast (6.5%). The forecasting error appears to have been largely driven by an underestimation of the elevated base created by one-off payments in mining and forestry a month earlier. At the same time, trade, manufacturing and energy production also surprised on the downside. Employment, meanwhile, remained stable at -0.8% yoy.
Average wage in the enterprise sector increased by 5.6% yoy in August, down from 6.8% yoy in July. The reading came in well below both the consensus forecast (6.5%) and our forecast (6.3%). A sizeable share of the slowdown can be attributed to the high base from the previous month, generated by bonuses in the mining and forestry sectors. We estimate that this effect accounted for roughly 0.6 percentage points of the deceleration. The remainder was spread across several sectors, including trade (0.2pp), which had posted an exceptionally strong result in July, manufacturing (0.1pp) and energy production (0.1pp).
The August reading therefore confirms that July’s surge was a one-off phenomenon and that wage growth is currently running at a pace closer to 6% yoy. Hence, today's downside surprise does not invalidate our recent upward revision of the wage outlook. In response to the string of significant upside surprises recorded over recent months, we revised our forecast for average wage growth earlier this month. We now expect wages to increase by 6.0% in 2026, compared with our previous forecast of 5.5%. The evidence increasingly suggests that the weakness in labour demand has proven less persistent and less severe than we had anticipated, translating into somewhat stronger employees' bargaining power. Equally important for this revision has been the change in the inflation outlook relative to what we expected at the beginning of the year, when we first formulated the 5.5% wage forecast.
Average wage in the enterprise sector (% yoy)
Source: Statistics Poland (GUS), Pekao Research
Average employment in the enterprise sector declined by 0.8% yoy in August, unchanged from July. The reading was in line with both consensus expectations and our forecast. The number of jobs fell by 11k mom, exactly as we had anticipated. The employment data paint a slightly encouraging picture of the domestic labour market. Its performance in 2026 is beginning to compare favourably with that observed in the previous two years. The improvement is far from substantial, but does provide a subtle indication that labour market conditions are gradually moving in the right direction. This assessment is also supported by job vacancy data, which suggest that labour demand is slowly emerging from its trough.
Change in employment since the beginning of the year (thousands of jobs)
Source: Statistics Poland (GUS), Pekao Research
Number of job advertisements posted online (thousands, 6-month average)
Source: Grant Thornton
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