Poland’s income reached 81% of the European Union average in 2025, up from 40% in the mid-1990s, according to a Guardian report examining the country’s economic transformation and the pressures that have accompanied it. The report said national income exceeded $1 trillion last year, placing Poland among the world’s 20 largest economies, though those comparisons were not independently checked against the underlying data in the research reviewed.
Recent official figures show the economy continued to grow while prices rose. Statistics Poland revised its estimate of 2025 gross domestic product growth to 3.8% year on year. Its latest inflation release said consumer prices in September 2026 were 4.1% higher than a year earlier and 0.7% above August.
Growth and the cost of living
The Guardian report describes a striking rise in earnings since Poland joined the EU in 2004. Average monthly wages more than tripled in nominal terms over that period, reaching 8,904 złoty in 2025, the newspaper reported. It also cited Deutsche Bank as estimating that net monthly salaries in Warsaw had risen 120% since 2016.
Those increases have not eased pressure on everyone. The report said rising living costs were squeezing poorer residents of Warsaw and cited an analysis by the London School of Economics that placed inequality among the highest in Europe. The wage and inequality comparisons are reported by the Guardian and were not independently verified in the research reviewed.
The figures present a more complicated picture than economic growth alone: higher incomes have accompanied a larger economy, while inflation and inequality remain concerns raised in the reporting. September’s year-on-year inflation rate of 4.1% provides current context for those cost pressures, although the official release does not assess their effects on individual households.
Ambitions beyond low-cost labour
Poland is also seeking to strengthen its position as a regional technology hub. The Guardian reported a planned $1 billion public-private fund for startups and artificial intelligence companies. The report presented the initiative as part of an effort to move toward higher-productivity work, not as proof that the shift has already been achieved.
InPost founder Rafał Brzoska told the newspaper that Poland needed to move beyond cheap labour and focus on productivity, technology and higher-value work. His remarks reflect an argument about the country’s next stage of development, while the available research does not independently establish the scale or results of that transition.
Energy remains part of the wider economic context. A Guardian report published on 7 October said coal supplied more than half of Poland’s electricity generation and that a planned floating liquefied natural gas terminal in Gdańsk was expected to begin operating in early 2028. Those details are dated background from an earlier report, not a new development confirmed in the economic feature published on 15 October.
The economic feature, published by the Guardian on 15 October 2026, frames Poland’s rise as both a major change in national prosperity and a transition with unresolved challenges around living costs, inequality and the move toward technology-led growth.