High unemployment continues to bedevil Poland, although the national picture masks striking spatial differences that this paper seeks to explain using a panel data set for the country’s NUTS 4 level powiats. Given the economy’s somewhat peculiar configuration throughout its communist epoch, emphasis is placed on rural-urban differences. Finding a random effects estimator to be most appropriate for the observations in question, the results indicate that increases in foreign capital, investment and the concentration of agriculture are associated with lower unemployment while its opposite is characteristic, all else equal, of more rural areas and those placing greater reliance on domestic enterprise.