The article describes the commodification process, focusing on the sphere of labour. The specificity of the approach consists of treating labour as a component of the systemic transformation of the Polish society. The Polish people, on their way from real socialism to market democracy, are undergoing a particularly intense commodification process. This process has been intensified by Poland’s accession to the European Union and by globalisation, due to participation in supranational market systems at the regional (European) and global levels. Empirically, the commodification process has been analysed using awareness studies. Subjects were young inhabitants of Warsaw with higher education, and the study results were additionally related to nationallevel research. The labour sphere is seen here as a key element of the wider social reality and it is studied empirically in terms of individual orientations which the subjects exhibit towards normative social models. The processes of commodification and decommodification are seen in the context of the systemic transformation from centralisedautocratic to the marketdemocratic models of society. Attention has also been paid to the role of the welfare state, whose key function is to protect citizens from major risks, including the risk of being unemployed. The empirical study clearly shows the specificity of labour in commodification processes. Labour was shown to be an element that stands out from the other elements of the social system.