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

It is insufficient to simply calculate the number of jobs in the mining industry to determine the labour market effects of a coal phase-out. In this paper, we estimate the scale of indirect jobs in Europe's largest hard coal mining region, Upper Silesia and categorise them as mining-related or mining-dependent. Additionally, we provide a detailed overview of the structure and spatial distribution of mining-related companies, utilising in-formation from public tenders offered by five of the country's largest coal enterprises, as well as financial and employment data from official administrative repositories. Our observations have revealed a significant agglomeration effect in the region, with companies located within 20 km of the nearest active hard coal mine receiving 80% of all tender revenues. Furthermore, we have found that 41% of all identified jobs in mining -dependent companies in Upper Silesia are at high risk of liquidation if there is a decline in coal production. Finally, we argue in favour of labour market mitigation policies tailored explicitly to mining-dependent em-ployees and suggest the widespread use of administrative data in just transition planning to address the limi-tations of dominant top-down modelling approaches.