Pracujący biedni na rynku pracy : procesy uelastyczniania zatrudnienia a zjawisko pauperyzacji pracowników

Abstract

The exponential growth in flexible forms of employment has been a feature of the Polish labor market over the last few years. While having many positive effects leading to the higher market flexibility, it brings about some backlashes including income marginalization among the people who are involved only in flexible forms of employment over prolonged time periods. Other factors infl uencing income marginalization are professional qualifications, health and household size. Although the problem of professionally active individuals’ pauperization has been addressed in academic discourse, the empirical research aimed at studying the peculiarity of this phenomenon at the Polish labor market has not been undertaken yet. In the article an attempt is made to defi ne the notion of “working poor” and to provide a characteristic of the people who remain poor despite being active at the labor market. CBOS (Public Opinion Research Center) studies are used as a source of data on the social features of “working poor” at the Polish labor market. The issues of income stratification among those gainfully employed are placed in a historical perspective stretching from the Industrial Revolution to present.