Georgia’s unemployment rate fell to 13.8% in the second quarter of 2026, down by 0.5 percentage points year-on-year, but the decline was not driven by higher employment. According to Geostat, the labor force decreased by 0.6% to 1.58 million, while the number of people outside the labor force rose by 35,600 to 1.39 million.
Employment also remained largely unchanged. The number of employed people fell by 0.1% to 1.365 million, while the employment rate dropped by 0.4 percentage points to 46%. At the same time, 53% of businesses surveyed by the Georgian Business Association cited a shortage of specialists as a major obstacle, while 40% reported a broader shortage of workers.
Other indicators show only modest improvement in labor demand. The number of wage earners increased by 2.8% year-on-year in June, according to PMCG, while jobs.ge vacancies rose just 0.5% after a decline in April. The end of the government’s subsidized public employment program in 2026 may also have contributed to changes in labor-force participation, although its exact impact cannot yet be determined.
The trend was similar in the first quarter, when unemployment fell even as employment and labor-force participation declined and the economically inactive population increased. The data therefore suggest that the lower unemployment rate does not necessarily reflect stronger job creation. Instead, part of the decline appears to be linked to people leaving the labor force, potentially due to skills mismatches, discouragement, demographic factors or migration.
