Polish companies can purchase robots, AI systems and new infrastructure more quickly than the labour market is able to supply people capable of operating them. The skills gap has therefore ceased to be a recruitment problem. Increasingly, it is a constraint on technological investment.
The scale of the problem is clearly evident in vocational education. Poland has a relatively high proportion of students choosing this pathway. In 2023, 58.9 per cent of secondary school pupils were enrolled in vocational education, compared with an EU average of 52.4 per cent. In 2024, 62 per cent of recent graduates had completed work-based learning. Despite this, their employment rate stood at 75.4 per cent, whilst the EU average reached 80 per cent. At the same time, one in four graduates of first-level vocational schools did not hold a vocational certificate.
This does not look like a shortage of vocational education. It looks more like a mismatch between its outcomes and an economy in which the structure of labour demand is changing rapidly.
Automation engineers needed immediately
Data from PARP show where the pressure is greatest. In the first half of 2025, automation engineers were the profession with the greatest shortage amongst those analysed in Poland: there were 7.8 job vacancies for every available unemployed person or graduate. In the case of precision mechanics, the number of vacancies rose by 1,413 per cent between 2019 and 2025. PARP attributes this increase, amongst other things, to the growth of the electronics and engineering industries, as well as new manufacturing investments.
These are skills situated precisely at the intersection of industry and technology: automation, mechatronics, electronics, control systems and machine diagnostics. In a factory equipped with robots, vision systems, IoT sensors and production software, the line between a ‘technical worker’ and a technology specialist is becoming increasingly blurred.
Similar pressure is emerging in the IT sector itself. In its ‘Digital Decade 2026’ report, the European Commission points out that the pool of ICT specialists in Poland remains stagnant, whilst businesses still lag behind the EU average in terms of digitalisation and the use of advanced technologies. The Commission explicitly links the need to increase the number of specialists with the development of future technologies.
Technology is changing faster than the curriculum
The problem is broader than simply the number of graduates in specific fields. The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2030, 39 per cent of the skills used in the workplace today will have changed or become obsolete. Already, 63 per cent of employers surveyed consider the skills gap to be the greatest barrier to business transformation. The demand for skills related to AI, big data and cybersecurity is growing the fastest.
In industry, this is compounded by robotics, automation and the ability to work in an environment where humans interact with autonomous systems. In June 2026, the WEF presented a separate skills framework for smart factories covering over 80 occupations in manufacturing and supply chains. The very fact that such a model has been developed illustrates the pace of change: companies are no longer simply looking for machine operators, but for people capable of working in an environment that combines software, data and automation.
Companies are reaching out to schools
Some companies are not waiting for the education system to solve the problem on its own. Solaris has been running sponsored classes since 2007. Students studying subjects such as mechatronics spend two days a week at the company’s facilities. By 2025, over 250 people had completed the programme, and in the 2025/2026 academic year, twenty graduates of the company-sponsored classes received job offers and employment contracts.
The company is also developing dual-study programmes with Poznań University of Technology. Of the 78 participants to date, 34 subsequently found employment at Solaris, including in roles as design engineers and engineers within the Product & Technology division.
This is no longer simply educational philanthropy or employer branding. It is about building the company’s own talent pool several years before a vacancy arises.
In an economy where automation and AI are shortening the technology cycle, recruitment is becoming the final stage of a much longer process. If there is a shortage of specialists in automation, mechatronics, cyber security or data only once an investment has made it into the budget, the problem arose much earlier. The company can then raise salaries or outbid the competition. However, this will not increase the number of people with the necessary skills.
