Unemployment’s impact on the socio-economic development of Poland and Ukraine: Governance aspects

Abstract

The significance of this study lies in proving the validity of the Okun effect by indicators of socio-economic development in Poland, Ukraine, the EU, and the world, which are: economic growth leads to a decrease in unemployment, while economic recession leads to an increase in unemployment; an increase in unemployment is accompanied by an economic recession, while a decrease in unemployment is accompanied by economic growth. The article is exploratory and based on comparative analysis, regression analysis, ANOVA, the graphical method, logical generalization, synthesis, induction, and deduction. It substantiates the expediency of comparative evaluation of the impact of unemployment on the socio-economic development of neighbouring countries: the Republic of Poland (a member of the European Union) and Ukraine (a candidate for the European Union) sup-plemented with a comparison of the average European and average world data. It shows that the sensitivity of real GDP to changes in the unemployment rate, as well as the sensitivity of the unemployment rate to changes in real GDP in Poland, is the lowest. In contrast, Ukraine has the highest relative to the EU and global averages. It was established that state anti-crisis management in the social sphere should be focused both on financial support for employers and employees and on the creation of new vacancies in the implementation of infrastructure projects.