Poland: manufacturing productivity, cost and AI adoption in 2026 data

The largest manufacturing economy in Central and Eastern Europe, with the fastest-rising labour cost of the seven countries we track and one of the lowest rates of AI use in EU manufacturing.

Key figures: Poland vs EU-27

Source: Eurostat, dataset codes in the last column. Value added per worker is our calculation (gross value added ÷ employed persons). Labour cost is in EUR and includes exchange-rate effects.

Sector mix: the top five branches

Source: Eurostat nama_10_a64, B1G, current prices, 2023. Total manufacturing value added 2023: EUR 131,271 m. Share is our calculation. Electrical equipment (7,231) and repair and installation (6,704) follow. Some Polish cells, including textiles and refined petroleum, are confidential or missing in the release.

Food is the largest branch by a wide margin. Metal fabrication and plastics, both typical automotive and appliance supplier trades, come next. Poland's industrial base is broader and less dependent on car assembly than Czechia's, Slovakia's or Hungary's.

Where the industry is

• Automotive and electromobility. 197,000 people worked in automotive in September 2024, 3.1% of business-sector employment. The sector accounts for about 8% of GDP. Poland produced 574,600 passenger cars and 308,500 trucks in 2023 (PAIH, 2025).
• Batteries. Poland is Europe's largest and the world's second-largest producer of lithium-ion batteries, with 6% of global output in 2024 (PAIH, 2025).
• Exports to Germany. Germany is the top destination for Polish automotive component exports, €3.53bn in 2023 (PAIH, 2025).
• New investment. Poland attracted 285 foreign direct investment projects in 2025, up 10% while Europe as a whole fell 7%. Jobs created fell 36%: more projects, smaller ones (EY Attractiveness Survey, 2026).
• Regions. Śląskie, Wielkopolskie, Dolnośląskie, Mazowieckie, Małopolskie and Łódzkie are commonly cited as the main industrial voivodeships. We have not verified their shares against GUS regional accounts, so we do not rank them.

The pressure on Polish plants

Labour cost. Hourly labour cost in manufacturing went from €13.2 in 2023 to €15.5 in 2024 and €17.1 in 2025, a rise of 29.5% — the fastest of the seven countries and more than three times the EU-27 rate of 9.0% (Eurostat lc_lci_lev). Part of it is currency: the series is in EUR and the złoty strengthened. Polish manufacturing now costs more per hour than Hungary (€15.6), though still less than Czechia (€20.2) or Slovakia (€19.3).

Productivity gap. In 2025 hourly labour cost rose 10.3% while value added per worker rose 0.4% (our calculation from Eurostat lc_lci_lev, nama_10_a10 and nama_10_a10_e; different denominators, nominal EUR). Whole-economy productivity per hour improved from 66.2 to 68.4 against an EU-27 index of 100 (Eurostat tesem160), still the lowest of the seven after Bulgaria.

Energy. A plant in the 2,000–19,999 MWh band paid €0.214/kWh excluding VAT in the second half of 2025, above the EU-27 average of €0.192 (Eurostat nrg_pc_205).

People. The manufacturing job vacancy rate was 0.8% in both 2024 and 2025, below the EU-27 rate of 1.5% (Eurostat jvs_a_rate_r2). The constraint is less about filling operator positions and more about paying for them and finding maintenance and process skills.

Customers. With Germany the main buyer of Polish automotive components, suppliers inherit their customers' cost-down targets and reporting requirements.

Digital and AI maturity

7.7% of Polish manufacturers with 10+ employees used at least one AI technology in 2025, up from 5.1% in 2024 (Eurostat isoc_eb_ain2). The EU-27 manufacturing rate is 17.3%. The 2025 survey asked broader questions, so part of the rise is methodological. Across all sectors the rate is 8.4%. On the Digital Intensity Index, 70.0% of Polish enterprises reached at least a basic level in 2024, against 73.7% in the EU-27 (isoc_e_dii) — close to average on office tools, far behind on AI.

One national survey is available: APA Group's Stan Przemysłu 4.0 w Polsce 2024, 115 manufacturing and technology firms. 88% said Industry 4.0 raises competitiveness; 67% named financial cost as the main barrier; about half reported organisational resistance. 20% were developing an implementation strategy, 6% piloting and 18% scaling. The sample is small and vendor-commissioned, so treat it as indicative.

What this means for a mid-size plant in Poland

• Recalculate labour cost per good part. Take your three largest product families and compare labour cost per good part in 2023 and today. If it rose by less than your wage bill, productivity absorbed the difference. If it rose by as much, your quotes are carrying the whole increase.
• Record stops before you buy anything. On one bottleneck line, log every stop above a threshold you choose, with a reason, for a few weeks. Paper or a spreadsheet will do. The result tells you whether losses sit in breakdowns, changeovers, speed or scrap, and whether automated capture is worth paying for.
• Point the data at your technicians' time. With vacancy rates below 1%, operators can be hired; experienced maintenance staff are harder to find. Stop-reason data shows which failures consume their hours and where repair time is longest.
• Meter idle consumption. At €0.214/kWh, the power drawn by compressors, ovens and presses while nothing is produced is a cost you can measure with the same machine-state data.
• Compare local options. Poland has a dense field of domestic monitoring and MES vendors — Asix, Operator, Transition Technologies PSC and Prodio among them — and many integrators. Disclosure: manufacturingml.com is published by TEEPTRAK SAS, which sells production-monitoring and OEE software. Compare on data ownership, ERP integration and time to the first report your shift leaders actually use.
• Treat AI as a later step. Predictive maintenance and quality models need months of clean machine and stop history. Start collecting it now if AI is on your three-year plan.

Trade fairs, 2026–2027

The 2026 ITM edition (26–29 May 2026) had more than 500 exhibitors from 27 countries and 12,518 visitors. Sources: industryweek.pl, automaticaexpo.com, itm-europe.pl, simp.pl.

Funding

Poland's options include ARP's Dig.IT programme under FENG, where MES is named as an eligible cost, and the robotisation tax relief; we track status, eligibility and deadlines, dated and linked to the official agency, on factoryoptimizationai.com/cee/ — check the current call documentation before you plan around any of it.

• CEE 2026 data report: all seven countries compared
• Czechia country profile
• Romania country profile
• Hungary country profile
• Slovakia country profile
• Bulgaria country profile
• Slovenia country profile
• CEE Manufacturing Data Pack 2026 (xlsx)

Questions

How productive is Polish manufacturing compared with the EU?

Value added per manufacturing worker was €39.5k in 2025, against €89.3k in the EU-27 — about 44% (our calculation from Eurostat nama_10_a10 and nama_10_a10_e). The figure is nominal EUR; on a price-adjusted, whole-economy basis Poland's productivity per hour is 68.4 against an EU-27 index of 100 (Eurostat tesem160, 2025).

How fast are manufacturing labour costs rising in Poland?

Hourly labour cost in Polish manufacturing rose from €13.2 in 2023 to €17.1 in 2025, +29.5%, against +9.0% in the EU-27 (Eurostat lc_lci_lev). Part of the increase reflects a stronger złoty, since the series is published in EUR.

How many Polish manufacturers use AI?

7.7% of manufacturers with 10+ employees used at least one AI technology in 2025, against 17.3% in the EU-27 (Eurostat isoc_eb_ain2). The 2025 survey asked broader questions than 2024, so the rise from 5.1% overstates real growth.

Is there a labour shortage in Polish manufacturing?

Not in headline terms. The manufacturing job vacancy rate was 0.8% in 2025, below the EU-27 rate of 1.5% (Eurostat jvs_a_rate_r2). The pressure shows up as wage growth and as a shortage of specific skills such as maintenance.

Sources

1. Eurostat nama_10_a10 (2024–2025)
2. Eurostat nama_10_a10_e (2024–2025)
3. Eurostat nama_10_a64 (2023)
4. Eurostat sbs_ovw_act (2023)
5. Eurostat isoc_eb_ai (2024–2025)
6. Eurostat isoc_eb_ain2 (2024–2025)
7. Eurostat isoc_e_dii (2024)
8. Eurostat lc_lci_lev (2023–2025)
9. Eurostat jvs_a_rate_r2 (2024–2025)
10. Eurostat tesem160 (2024–2025)
11. Eurostat nrg_pc_205 (2025-S2)
12. PAIH, The Automotive & Electromobility Sector 2025
13. EY Attractiveness Survey via XYZ.pl (2026)
14. APA Group, Stan Przemysłu 4.0 w Polsce 2024, via ERP-view.pl
15. Warsaw Industry Week
16. Warsaw Industry Automatica
17. ITM Industry Europe
18. SIMP: ITM Industry Europe 2026

Published by TEEPTRAK SAS, which makes production-monitoring and OEE software, with an office in Bucharest (TEEPTRAK SRL). Figures are sourced on each page. Funding rules change: check the official call documents before you budget.