The state employs 112,712 people and plans to spend GEL 1.65 billion on their salaries in 2022, - show the data from the draft budget 2022. But, in reality, both the number of employees in the public sector and their total salaries are much larger.
The reason is that the draft budget does not include detailed information on how many people are employed in each LEPL under different ministries, as well as in their sub-organizations. It also does not include information on how many people work in municipal bodies.
The National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat) has more detailed statistics on the number of employees in the public sector. According to it, as of 2020 the public sector employed 294,700 people.
In addition to that, the Pension Fund has even more detailed statistics, which divides its participants in the system into public and private sectors. According to the organization, the public sector has 301,892 employees, of which 259,293 civil servants still participate in the pension system, while 42,599 civil servants have left the pension system.
Accordingly, the Georgian public sector actually employs 302,000 persons, although the public sector employs even more people. The fact is that a number of state-owned enterprises belong to different ministries or municipal bodies, and the number of employees in these LLCs, according to the report of the Ministry of Finance, exceeds 50,000.
