New Index Places Poland Among EU's Most AI-Vulnerable Labor Markets

A team of researchers from Ukraine's Poltava Polytechnic National University, named after Yurii Kondratiuk, has developed a new index measuring how exposed a country's human capital is to the effects of AI development. Among six countries compared, Poland scores worse than Finland, Germany, France and Estonia, though its result is steadily improving.

The index runs on a scale from 0 to 1. A score below 0.25 indicates low vulnerability, 0.25-0.5 moderate, 0.5-0.75 high, and above 0.75 critical. Poland's average for 2019-2024 fell within the high vulnerability range, but the latest 2024 reading of 0.441 moved the country into the moderate category. The authors stress, however, that the direction of change doesn't remove the need for reform, since the gap to the leaders in the ranking remains large.

Five pillars of vulnerability

HCVAI doesn't just measure how many jobs can be automated. The index is built from five components: how exposed jobs are to automation, workers' ability to acquire new skills, how prepared public institutions are to support change, the impact of migration on the labor pool, and the overall level of AI development and adoption in the economy.

The analysis shows that the direct exposure of Polish jobs to automation is relatively low compared with the other countries studied. The main problem isn't the risk of workers being replaced by algorithms, but the lack of support systems that would allow for a smooth transition.

Where the weakness lies

The authors point to three specific areas where Poland performs worst: workers' limited capacity to retrain, public institutions' inadequate preparedness to support labor market changes, and technological immaturity compared with Scandinavian countries and Western Europe. On top of that comes a migration factor, clearly visible since 2022.

The influx of workers from Ukraine following the Russian invasion increased pressure on the Polish labor market in a way the researchers included as a separate component of the index. This isn't about judging migration as a negative phenomenon, but about the fact that rapid shifts in employment structure place additional strain on institutions responsible for retraining and supporting workers, institutions that were already stretched thin.

Ukraine as a warning sign

The most telling result is Ukraine's, the only country in the study classified as critically vulnerable, with an index value above 0.75. The war destroyed part of the education and institutional infrastructure while simultaneously accelerating the emigration of skilled workers, together creating the worst-case scenario in terms of readiness for AI transformation.

For Poland, Ukraine's result serves as a benchmark showing how quickly human capital vulnerability can rise once institutions stop keeping pace with economic and social change. The report's authors don't claim Poland faces a similar scenario, but they treat the Ukrainian case as evidence that the index responds to real shocks.

What it means for Polish companies

The HCVAI results fit into a broader picture that Polish labor market research has been painting for months: digital skills are growing more slowly than employers expect, and institutional support for retraining remains limited. The index adds an international comparison to that picture, showing that the problem isn't specific to one sector but reflects a systemic lag behind countries like Finland or Estonia.

For companies operating in Poland, this means that in practice, much of the responsibility for preparing workers for AI falls on the companies themselves, since systemic support from public institutions still isn't keeping pace with the speed of technology adoption. The authors identify this as the main risk, not job automation itself.

The index's downward trend in recent years, from an average of 0.526 to 0.441 in 2024, suggests the situation is slowly improving. The scale of that improvement, however, remains insufficient to bring Poland closer to the level of the Scandinavian countries, and the study's authors say they plan to extend the analysis to more countries in the region.