One of the major factors drawing foreign investment to Poland in the recent years is high availability of highly skilled employees, with quality of work matching the highly developed countries' standard, and much lower cost. This difference is reflected in e.g. Polish Competitive Advantages report by Boston Consulting Group, of July 2004, where labour costs of Western Europe, CEE and Asia were compared (see graph 33.1)

Apart from low price, another advantage of Poland is the availability of workforce. This was presented e.g. in the Ernst & Young report on investment attractiveness. Poland was described as the most attractive, in this respect, country in Europe. Comparatively large population of Poland contributes to this advantage, and the manufacturing tradition in many industries (like automotive) is long and rich. Therefore, finding skilled workforce is not a problem, and it is easy to find specialist engineers as well. Future employer should make notice of the regional differentiation in the availability of workforce, depending mainly on academic and industrial traditions of the area. Therefore, an entrepreneur wishing to employ qualified engineers or IT specialists should focus mainly on the biggest cities with academic centres. Apart from Warsaw, these are Kraków (where a big R&D centre has already been set up by e.g. Motorola), Gdańsk (with a large R&D centre of Intel etc.), Wrocław, Poznań, Łódź.

Examples of international companies which have invested in R&D laboratories in Poland are numerous, and reflect the recognition of Poland's advantages and achievements by the international business community.

Social and demographic processes which are occuring in Poland recently in Poland, will be strengthening the attractiveness of the country in the coming years. A population boom generation is entering thee market, and much bigger percentage of young people strive to obtain higher education.

Graph 33.1

Source: based on the report Competitive Advantages of Poland by BCG, July 2004