Mapping the indirect employment of hard coal mining: a case study of Upper Silesia, Poland

It is insufficient to calculate the number of jobs in the mining industry to determine the labour market effects of a coal phase-out. This paper estimates the scale of mining-related and mining-dependent jobs in Europe’s largest hard coal mining region: Upper Silesia. In addition, we provide a precise structure and spatial distribution of mining-related companies using information from public tenders offered by five of the largest coal enterprises, coupled with financial and employment data from official administrative repositories. Our observations have shown a significant agglomeration effect in the region: companies within 20 kilometres of the nearest active hard coal mine gained 80% of all tender revenues. Moreover, we found that 41% of all identified jobs in mining-dependent companies in Upper Silesia were highly at risk of liquidation if there was a decline in coal production. Finally, we argue for labour market mitigation policies tailored to mining-dependent employees and the widespread application of administrative data in just transition planning to address the limitations of dominant top-down modelling approaches.