For Poland, the last decade of the 20th century was a time of intensive social, political and economic change. Poland was confronted with the necessity of quick but deep changes in the economy, as well as in state administration and the functioning of newly-established self-government structures. As a result of actions taken, the Polish market began to exhibit negative, previously-unknown occurrences, such as firm bankruptcies, a much lower demand on the labor force, which, aggregated with the growing share of the population at working age, resulted in a novel occurrence in Poland; namely, unemployment. From the beginning of the transformation period, agriculture has absorbed the surplus of labor from the rest of the economy. Agriculture, heavily overpopulated in some regions of Poland even before the free market economy, became a sponge absorbing the ever more redundant labor force. Together with the fragmented farmland structure, this has caused an increase in hidden unemployment in rural areas.