Income group three, given their economic structure and location, do not yet possess the full range of attributes that characterise IG1 voivodships. Their economic performance in real GDP capita terms however is comparable with that of most voivodships throughout the country and is also higher in some cases. A factor that has contributed to this performance has been the low growth in average prices over time (CPI) and the resulting higher degree of insulation from government policy in respect of price increases in food and energy in particular. This has enabled real growth to play a more dominant role in overall nominal output. In this regard low prices were identified as an important factor in the catchup process, though observation of all component results from the decomposition technique revealed that only Podlaskie was beginning to make some headway in closing the gap on the remainder of the country. Podlaskie ranked second in the country for achieving the second highest average growth rates in real GDP capita and labour productivity. It also recorded the lowest fall in the number of hours worked and performed the best of all IG3 voivodships in terms of average employment. This work did identify however that a proportion of the downward pressure on the labour market had in fact been eased through falling demography and the outflows of workers.