Georgia’s Employment Promotion Law: A Framework for Job Seekers, Not Yet a System for the Unemployed

GILS Research Team

Editor: Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze, MD, MPH, PhD

Georgian Institute of Labour Studies · Laws & Conventions

26 September 2026

Georgia’s Law on Employment Promotion, adopted in July 2020, was the country’s first comprehensive legal framework for public employment services. It created the State Employment Support Agency, defined job matching, wage subsidies, internships and labour migration as forms of support, and introduced protected workplaces for persons with disabilities. A detailed 2021 review for the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung concluded that technical weaknesses made its success uncertain. This analysis examines the law’s design, what is known about its implementation, and the gap it leaves: support for the unemployed.

1. Introduction

Before 2020, Georgia’s employment services rested on a patchwork of government resolutions and annual programmes. The Law on Employment Promotion was intended to give them a coherent legal basis. This analysis asks whether the law provides the tools Georgia needs to address its main labour market problems — high unemployment, low participation and widespread underutilisation — and what evidence exists on its delivery.

2. What the Law Provides

Sources: Matsne (Law No. 6819); GRATA International (2020); Boergen & Burisch (2021).

3. Findings

3.1 Designed for job seekers, not the unemployed

The FES review found that the law uses “job seeker” in different senses — sometimes including employed people seeking better jobs, sometimes only the unemployed — and that its emphasis on profiling, career plans and short-term training favours job seekers over people in long-term unemployment. The explanatory note contained no statistics on unemployment, vacancies or skills shortages (Boergen & Burisch, 2021).

3.2 No reliable count of the registered unemployed

According to the FES review, the Worknet database contained data on some 230,000 registered persons but did not distinguish between unemployed and employed job seekers; agency staff assumed about half were unemployed. The authors concluded that Georgia lacked reliable statistics on the registered unemployed on which to base employment policy (Boergen & Burisch, 2021). The only reliable unemployment measure remains Geostat’s Labour Force Survey, which recorded 13.9% unemployment in 2024 and 2025.

3.3 Weak enforceability

The review found that obligations on employers (such as participation in labour market surveys) and on job seekers carried few or no sanctions, that several provisions were open-ended, and that responsibilities were divided across several ministries, with data processing assigned to the Ministry of Economy rather than the Ministry of Labour (Boergen & Burisch, 2021).

3.4 Public works dominate delivery

In December 2022, the government approved a state employment promotion programme with a public works sub-programme for recipients of targeted social assistance. By 12 December 2023, 32,923 socially vulnerable people had been employed through it, 86% of them in municipalities and affiliated organisations (Ministry of Health data, via Sakartvelos Ambebi, 2024). Public works provide income, but whether they improve participants’ longer-term employment prospects in Georgia has not been publicly evaluated.

4. Discussion

Argument: a law without income support cannot activate the unemployed

In most European countries, public employment services are linked to unemployment benefits: registration gives access to income support, and support is conditional on active job search. Georgia has no unemployment insurance. Without that link, unemployed people have little reason to register, the agency has little information about them, and activation measures reach a limited and self-selected group.

Counter-argument: the law created an institutional foundation

The law established, for the first time, a dedicated agency, defined services and introduced protected workplaces and supported employment for persons with disabilities. These are real advances, and implementation can improve through secondary legislation. The FES authors themselves welcomed the law as a commendable attempt at an orderly basis for employment policy (Boergen & Burisch, 2021).

5. Limitations

Public data on the State Employment Support Agency’s caseload, programme participation and outcomes are limited, so this analysis relies largely on a legal review and on administrative figures reported in the media. The FES review was written before the substantive provisions entered into force; some issues may since have been addressed in secondary legislation.

6. Conclusion

Georgia’s Law on Employment Promotion gave public employment services a legal basis, but its design centres on job seekers rather than the unemployed, it lacks enforceable obligations and reliable data, and it operates without unemployment insurance. Until registration is linked to income support and outcomes are measured, the law’s ambitions will exceed its delivery.

GILS analyses are prepared with AI-assisted drafting. All figures and claims are verified against the cited primary sources and reviewed under the responsibility of the Editor.