Poland's Business Service Centers Export More Thanks to AI as Hiring Stalls

Poland's business process outsourcing and shared services center (BPO/SSC) sector is entering a new phase of growth. The latest report from the Business Service Sector Leaders Association (ABSL) shows that in 2025, exports of services generated by these centers reached $48.4 billion, with artificial intelligence becoming the main driver of productivity gains rather than new hiring.

What the ABSL Report Found

ABSL publishes an annual review of the business services sector, which spans accounting, IT, customer service, analytics and, increasingly, software development. The July 2026 edition is the first to explicitly link the sector's growing export value to AI adoption rather than to headcount expansion, which was the pattern just a few years ago.

Employment at the centers grew by 8,700 people over the year, reaching 500,500, a rise of 1.8 percent. That is well below the baseline scenario from a few years ago, which projected annual growth above 3 percent. For 2026, ABSL forecasts employment growth of just 0 to 0.5 percent, and in a cautious scenario does not rule out a slight decline in 2027.

Work Climbs the Value Chain

The key shift concerns the nature of the work being done. According to the report, 63 percent of processes carried out at Polish centers today are mid-office functions, and nearly 60 percent of operations are knowledge-intensive, meaning they require analysis, judgment and decision-making rather than repetitive data processing. It is precisely these more complex tasks that are growing fastest, while simple transactional processes are increasingly automated by AI tools.

The growth of AI lets us move up the value chain while employment levels stabilize - Janusz Dziurzyński, President of ABSL

ABSL President Janusz Dziurzyński stresses that Poland's sector is entering a phase where competitive advantage is decided not by headcount but by the ability to deliver more complex services to companies' global headquarters. In practice, this means centers in Poland are increasingly taking on analytical and decision-making tasks that used to stay in corporations' home countries.

Exports Outpace Employment

ABSL Vice President Mariusz Mulas points to the gap between export growth and employment growth, a direct result of rising productivity driven by automation and AI. Average exports per sector employee rose year over year by more than $10,000, reaching $96,700.

Average exports per employee rose year over year by more than $10,000 - Mariusz Mulas, Vice President of ABSL

For 2026 and 2027, ABSL forecasts continued export growth of 8 to 10 percent annually, despite the slowdown in job creation. In 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, only 50 new service centers opened in Poland, the lowest number since ABSL began tracking the statistic, mostly in Warsaw and Gdańsk. For the coming years, the organization forecasts 35 to 45 new centers annually, increasingly focused solely on knowledge-intensive services.

Employment Profile Is Changing

The report also shows a shift in who works in the sector. More than half of employees are now 35 or older, the number of junior positions is shrinking, and demand is rising for specialists and experts able to oversee and interpret the output of AI tools. Only 0.5 percent of center leaders cite staffing shortages as a serious problem, a sharp contrast with the situation a few years ago, when recruitment was one of the sector's main growth barriers.

As many as 33 percent of sector leaders expect that by 2030, half of the current workforce will need retraining, mainly toward data analytics, process automation and skills related to overseeing AI systems. ABSL also estimates that 70 percent of centers will move beyond traditional operations by 2030, developing advisory and product-related services.

What It Means for Poland's Economy

The business services sector now accounts for a record 6.1 percent of Poland's GDP and 7.8 percent of total corporate employment. ABSL's data confirm that Poland remains one of the leading locations for global service centers in Europe, but it is now competing not on the number of low-cost jobs but on the quality and complexity of the services it provides, with AI tools playing a key role for companies from the financial, technology and manufacturing sectors that operate centers in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and the Tricity area.

For Poland's labor market, this means demand is gradually shifting from simple operational roles toward analytical and expert positions, in line with broader forecasts on AI's impact on the Polish job market previously issued by the Polish Economic Institute and the International Monetary Fund. The BPO/SSC sector, which for two decades was one of the pillars of employment in major Polish cities, is now being tested on whether automation will translate into job losses or into a qualitative change in the jobs themselves.