Where Work Pays Least in Georgia: The Sector, Gender and Public-Sector Roots of Low Pay

GILS Research Team

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

Georgian Institute of Labour Studies · GILS Analysis

2 October 2026

Average earnings in Georgia have risen fast — to GEL 2,466 per month by the end of 2025. But the gains are distributed very unevenly. Employees in information and communication earn more than three times as much as teachers, and women earn about two-thirds of what men earn, a ratio that has barely moved. This analysis argues that low pay in Georgia is not only a market outcome: a large part of it is concentrated in sectors where the state is the main employer, and where it could act directly.

1. Introduction

Discussions of low pay in Georgia usually focus on the private sector and the absence of a functioning minimum wage. Those issues matter, and GILS addresses them elsewhere. This analysis looks at a different question: where in the economy is pay lowest, and who is employed there?

Our thesis is that low pay in Georgia has three overlapping roots — sector, gender and the public sector — and that the third is the most neglected. Because education, one of the largest employers in the country and the largest employer of women, is also the lowest-paid major sector, a significant share of Georgia’s low-pay problem is determined by public pay policy rather than by market forces.

2. Data

This analysis uses Geostat’s quarterly releases on average monthly nominal earnings of employees, PMCG Research’s compilation of 2024 sectoral averages and employment shares, and the ILO’s analysis of the sectoral distribution of employment by sex (Pignatti, 2026). Earnings statistics cover employees only; they exclude the self-employed and much of the informal economy, where earnings are typically lower. Averages are also pulled upward by high earners, so they overstate what a typical worker in each sector receives.

3. Findings

3.1 A wide sectoral spread

The best-paid sectors in Georgia are information and communication, financial services and construction. In the fourth quarter of 2025 they averaged GEL 4,373, GEL 3,748 and GEL 3,939 respectively, with construction earnings rising 17.2% in a single year (Geostat, 2026). At the other end, Geostat’s sector ranking places other service activities, education, agriculture, water supply and waste management, and accommodation and food services at the bottom of the distribution.

The low-paid sectors are not small. In 2024, wholesale and retail trade (16.1% of employment), agriculture (16.0%) and education (11.7%) were three of the four largest employers in the country (PMCG Research, 2025). Low pay is therefore not a marginal phenomenon affecting a small group of workers; it is built into the sectors where many Georgians work.

3.2 A stubborn gender gap

Source: Geostat (2024, 2026). Ratio = GILS calculation.

In the year to Q4 2025, men’s earnings rose by 12.2% and women’s by 9.8% (Geostat, 2026). Rapid wage growth has not narrowed the gap; in absolute terms it has widened. Geostat notes that in almost all sectors men’s average earnings exceeded women’s.

3.3 Where sector and gender meet

Source: Pignatti (2026), Table A3, Labour Force Survey 2021–2022.

The sectoral and gender patterns reinforce each other. More than one in five employed women works in education, the lowest-paid major sector, while one in seven employed men works in construction, one of the best-paid. Part of the gender pay gap is therefore a sectoral gap: women are concentrated in sectors that pay less, regardless of who works in them.

4. Discussion

Argument 1: Much of low pay is a public pay decision

Education is predominantly a public-sector activity in Georgia; the ILO notes that most employees in the sector are public-sector workers (Pignatti, 2026). The average teacher’s salary is therefore not set by a competitive market but by government budget and pay policy. The same is true for much of health and social work. When the state is the main employer in the lowest-paid, most feminised sectors, it is directly responsible for a significant share of both low pay and the gender pay gap.

Argument 2: Growth is concentrated where few Georgians work

The fastest-growing, best-paid sectors — information and communication, finance — employ a small share of the workforce. Information and communication accounts for 1.5% of male and 1.2% of female employment. High average wage growth in these sectors raises national averages without reaching most workers. Average earnings growth is therefore a poor indicator of how most employees are faring.

Counter-argument: sectoral pay differences reflect productivity

Economists rightly point out that wages broadly reflect productivity, and that ICT and finance are more productive than agriculture or hospitality. This explains much of the private-sector spread. It explains less in education, where pay is administratively set and where the social returns — a better-educated future workforce — are among the highest of any sector. Low teacher pay is not evidence of low productivity; it is evidence of a budget priority.

Counter-argument: the gender gap reflects choices

Some argue that the gender pay gap reflects women’s choices of sector and occupation. Sectoral sorting does explain part of the gap, as Table 2 shows. But Geostat reports that men out-earn women within almost all sectors, so sorting is not the whole story. And the “choice” of sector is shaped by social expectations about care and by the pay levels the state itself sets in feminised professions.

5. Limitations

Earnings data cover employees only and report averages, not medians, so they overstate typical pay in sectors with high earners. Sectoral averages for 2024 are preliminary. The sectoral distribution of employment by sex refers to 2021–2022. Regional differences are noted but not analysed in detail.

6. Conclusion

Georgia’s earnings growth is real, but it is uneven. Pay is lowest in large sectors — education, agriculture, trade, hospitality — and the gender gap has not narrowed despite rapid growth. Because the lowest-paid major sector is also the largest employer of women and is largely public, a meaningful part of Georgia’s low-pay problem is within the direct control of government. Raising pay in feminised public services would reduce both low pay and the gender pay gap at the same time.

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.