Which fields of study give students the best start on the job market? Where do young people most often go after graduation – and why? Answers to these questions are provided by the recently published 10th edition of the Polish Graduate Tracking System (ELA). This year’s data, published on June 30, 2025, sheds new light on the domestic migration of university graduates in Poland.
The ELA system, developed by the Information Processing Center – National Research Institute (OPI PIB) on behalf of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, is one of the most advanced tools for monitoring the professional careers of graduates in Europe. Since 2016, it has been helping high school graduates, students, universities, and local governments make data-driven decisions. In 2025, the system was enriched with new indicators related to the regional mobility of young people.
Among the most important new features is information on how often graduates move out of the voivodeship (province) where they studied and what financial and professional benefits they gain from doing so. The analysis covered, among others, the 2023 cohort of undergraduate and master’s degree programs, and comparisons were also made based on data from 2019–2022.
The data shows that people who graduated in the Warmian-Masurian Vovivodeship are the most likely to migrate – almost 44% of them moved to another region. At the opposite end of the spectrum are graduates from the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, where this percentage is only 15%. In turn, the Lower Silesian Voivodeship, despite being one of the regions with the highest earnings, is also characterized by relatively high graduate mobility.
OPI PIB experts have developed three indicators to better understand these processes: the share of graduates leaving, the difference in their (nominal) salaries, and the Relative Earnings Index (WWZ), which takes into account local economic conditions.
Graduates from the Silesian Voivodeship who decided to migrate earned on average over PLN 1,450 more than those who remained in the region. Interestingly, in the case of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship, those who remained were better paid, but migrants still achieved a higher economic position in their new place of residence.
This shows that decisions to move are not always dictated solely by the level of earnings. Other factors, such as career opportunities, quality of life, and social ties, are often equally important.
ELA data is available to everyone – students, lecturers, analysts, and local government officials. The modern platform enables the generation of reports, comparisons, and interactive infographics, allowing quick access to current, anonymized data from public registers (including POL-on and ZUS).
The full data is available at: ela.nauka.gov.pl
Source: gov.pl/nauka
