At GEL 20 per month, Georgia’s statutory minimum wage is not a floor — it is a legal fiction. A comprehensive review is long overdue.
In 1999, Georgia’s statutory minimum wage was set at GEL 20 per month. Twenty-seven years later, it remains at GEL 20 per month. Over that same period, Georgia’s nominal GDP has grown by approximately 1,200 percent, consumer prices have risen by roughly 400 percent, and average monthly wages have increased from approximately GEL 60 to GEL 2,364. The minimum wage has not moved.
The GEL 20 figure is not enforced, because no employer in Georgia pays GEL 20 per month. The market wage floor in every sector and every region of the country exceeds this figure by orders of magnitude. The statutory minimum wage in Georgia is a legal fossil — a number on the books that has no practical economic effect whatsoever. But its absence as a functioning policy instrument has significant consequences.
In functioning labour markets, the statutory minimum wage serves multiple roles beyond its immediate effect on the lowest-paid workers. It anchors the lower tail of the wage distribution, providing a reference point for collective bargaining. It signals the state’s view of the minimum threshold of labour dignity. It creates an enforcement mechanism — inspectors can identify non-compliance against a known floor. And it feeds into social protection formulas: unemployment benefits, social assistance thresholds, and pension minimum levels are often calculated as multiples of the minimum wage. When the floor is GEL 20, these multipliers produce absurd results.
Georgia’s subsistence minimum — the official calculation of the cost of a minimum consumption basket — stood at approximately GEL 268 per month for a single working-age adult in 2024. The living wage, which accounts for actual costs of housing, food, transport, and healthcare sufficient for a decent standard of living, is estimated by GILS at GEL 1,950–2,200 per month in Tbilisi and GEL 1,400–1,600 in Kutaisi and Batumi. The gap between GEL 20 and GEL 2,000 is not a rounding error. It represents a complete structural absence of minimum wage policy.
The ILO Convention C131 on minimum wage fixing, ratified by Georgia, requires that minimum wage levels take into account the needs of workers and their families and relevant economic factors. The Convention requires a consultative process involving social partners and mandates that the minimum wage be reviewed at regular intervals. Georgia fails all of these requirements. No review has been conducted. No consultation process exists. The GEL 20 figure reflects neither worker needs nor economic conditions from any year since the late 1990s.
Several business associations have independently arrived at similar conclusions. The American Chamber of Commerce Georgia has publicly endorsed a minimum wage floor of GEL 700 or above. The European Business Association has noted that a functioning minimum wage would reduce unfair competition from informal operators who currently undercut formal sector employers on labour costs. The argument for reform is not only about worker welfare — it is also about a level playing field for compliant businesses.
GILS Position: The Georgian Institute of Labour Studies recommends that the government initiate an immediate statutory minimum wage review, benchmarked to 50 percent of median earnings, as recommended by the ILO and required by the EU Adequate Minimum Wages Directive that Georgia is expected to align with as part of its EU candidacy. Based on 2024 Geostat median wage data, this would set the minimum at approximately GEL 700–750 per month.
The review process must be tripartite — conducted through the Tripartite Commission with formal representation from GTUC, GEA, and the government — and must produce a binding outcome with a phased implementation timeline. A figure of GEL 700 implemented immediately, rising to GEL 900 by 2027 and GEL 1,100 by 2029, would represent a credible trajectory.
GEL 20 is not a minimum wage. It is an embarrassment. Georgia’s EU candidacy makes the cost of continued inaction directly visible to European partners. The moment for reform is now.
Read the full GILS analysis: https://labour.edu.ge/living-wage-georgia/