Salary History Analysis: how wages in Poland have changed since 2002

A 10% raise with 10% inflation means your pay buys roughly as much as it did a year earlier. That is why the main chart shows two lines: the amounts you see on your payslip and their value in the prices of a base period you choose. We calculate real values with the GUS consumer price index.

You can select any range on the chart to zoom in, and use the arrow keys to move through the readings one period at a time. Below the chart, the same data is available as a table.

A separate section sets wage changes against price changes: year on year, cumulatively from a chosen period, or month on month. You can see straight away the periods when pay grew faster than prices and those when real wages fell.

Next to it is a simple calculator. Enter an amount from one period and see what it is worth in the prices of another. It is a historical conversion, not a valuation of any particular salary.

Each of these datasets describes a slightly different group of employees. The average from the Local Data Bank (BDL) covers a different range of companies than the average wage GUS announces every year, so the figure for Poland differs from the one in that announcement. The enterprise sector is a different population again. We do not stitch these series into a single line, and for every value we show where it comes from.

Since 2024, GUS has published a monthly median wage from its wage distribution survey. We show it alongside the average from the same survey, because these are the only two figures that can be fairly compared with each other.

If the gap between the average and the median widens, higher wages are growing faster than typical ones. If it narrows, wages are moving closer together. Next to them you will find the deciles GUS publishes for Poland as a whole.

• Regional comparison: up to five areas on one chart, over the same date range. You can also see how the gap between them has changed.
• Industries and occupations: wages by PKD section (PKD is the Polish classification of economic activities) and by occupation group. We show each edition of the occupation survey as a separate point and draw nothing in between.
• Pace of change: year-on-year changes, the compound annual growth rate and periods of falling real wages, with a map of the change in every voivodeship alongside.
• Regional rankings: where real wages grew fastest and how the distance to the figure for Poland as a whole has changed.
• Data table: every value of the selected series, nominal and real, with the source of each one.

• The GUS price index is national, so we calculate real values for every region with the same index. It does not account for price differences between regions.
• County data is available only annually and only for all industries combined.
• We show industries according to PKD 2007. Data under the new PKD 2025 classification may not be comparable with older data.
• Monthly changes depend heavily on the season, for example on bonus payouts, and do not point to a trend on their own.

From the Salary Map you can go to the history of the same region, industry, job title and year. From the Occupation Demand Map you go to wages for that occupation group if it has a confirmed match in the GUS wage survey, and otherwise to wages in the region.

The filters you choose are saved in the page URL. You can download the data as CSV and XLSX files and save the chart as PNG or SVG.