According to the official stats http://www.stat.gov.pl/english/index.htm unemployment rate is in the same order of magnitude as in Western European counties - in 1999 at 13% but most experts agree that the actual numbers are much higher, well over 20%. OTOH, many of the officially unemployed may be working in the informal sector.
Unemployment disproportionally affects people without higher education: 44% of men and 33% of women with vocational education an 37% of men and 30% of womene with elementary education of lower are reported unemployed in 1999. The rates for people with higher eductaion are 1.6% M and 2.3% W. It is interesting that women with higher education are more likely to be unemployed than men in the same category. The opposite is true for women and men with vocational or elementary education.
Crime rates: robbery and assault increased from 16.2 thousand in 1990 to 44.8 in 1999; aggravated assault from 3.9 to 12.9, embezzlement etc. from 6.0 to 27.6 other categories remained more or less the same. This suggest an increase of violence.
Incidence of many diseases actually decreased.
One has also to remember that the entire infrastructure (industry, transport, health care, education) had been built under socialism - the 'post-socialist' regimes mainly reap the benefits of that infrastructure. Giving the "marker economy" a credit for the increase in per capita GDP in thatcountry is nothing more than bourgeois charlatanry. Without state socialism, Poland would be just another impovershied third world country.
wojtek