Informal Economy

Overview

A large share of work in Georgia is informal — without a written contract, social insurance or effective legal protection. Informality is highest in agriculture, construction and micro-enterprises, among men, among the least educated, and among the very young and older workers. About a third of informal jobs are inside formal-sector firms rather than in unregistered businesses.

Key figures

Trend outside agriculture

Source: Geostat. Geostat's series covers non-agricultural employment; the ILO estimate (37.1%) covers all employment.

Georgia and the region

Source: ILOSTAT. The harmonised measure includes subsistence agriculture and is therefore much higher than the 37.1% estimated for 2022 in ILO Working Paper 159, which applies the current statistical standards. EU countries do not report a comparable indicator.

Across the EU, work without a contract is measured instead through surveys of undeclared work; the concepts differ, so Georgia's informality rate cannot be compared directly with EU figures.

Who works informally

• 69% of informal employment is in the informal sector (25.7% of total employment); 27% is in formal-sector firms (10.1% of total employment); 1.3% of total employment is in the household sector (Pignatti, 2026).
• Informality follows a U-shape with age: almost all employed very young people work informally; the rate is lowest, at 21%, around age 25, and rises again with age (Pignatti, 2026).
• Around 80% of workers with primary education are informally employed, compared with less than 20% of those with tertiary education (Pignatti, 2026).
• Informal workers earn substantially less, work fewer hours on average but more often at atypical times (Pignatti, 2026).
• An estimated 18,000 people worked as domestic workers in 2019 — about 1.1% of employment — largely outside the Labour Code's practical reach (ISET Policy Institute and UN Women, 2021).

Legal and policy framework

• Labour Code of Georgia — applies to employment relationships; in practice, unwritten and disguised relationships are hard to enforce.
• Tax Code — micro and small business regimes — see the GILS analysis of the small-business tax cliff.
• Labour Inspection Service — limited practical reach into the informal economy (US Department of State, 2025; Social Justice Center et al., 2023).
• ILO Recommendation No. 204 (2015) — on the transition from the informal to the formal economy.

Research map

• ILO (2026) — Pignatti, Recent trends on informal employment in Georgia, Working Paper 159. ILO
• Geostat — share of informal employment in non-agricultural employment. Data
• ISET Policy Institute and UN Women (2021) — regulatory impact assessment of ILO Convention No. 189 on domestic workers. iset-pi.ge
• UN Women (2024) — Invisible Hands: formalisation of domestic work in Georgia. unwomen.org
• Social Justice Center (2021) — informal and non-standard employment in Georgia (cited in Social Justice Center et al., 2023).
• Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (2023) — online platforms and platform work in Georgia. fes.de

Data gaps

• Geostat's official series covers non-agricultural employment only; the most recent estimate for all employment is the ILO figure for 2022.
• Earnings and working conditions in informal jobs are measured only occasionally.
• Platform work is not separately identified in official statistics.

GILS analyses on this topic

Global Wire · 5 Oct 2026Flood-Driven Employment Shocks in Nepal: Supply-Chain and Informal-Work Lessons for GeorgiaAn ILO preliminary assessment of the 2026 Nepal floods identifies labour-market vulnerabilities that extend well beyond disaster zones, offering transferable insights for economies with high informality and remittance…GILS Analysis · 2 Oct 2026Georgia’s Small-Business Tax Cliff: How Micro and Small Business Regimes Can Discourage the First Formal HireGeorgia's special tax regimes for micro and small businesses are among the most generous in the region: zero tax on turnover below GEL 30,000, and 1% on turnover…GILS Analysis · 23 Sep 202637% of Georgia’s Workers Are Informally Employed: Who They Are, Where They Work, and Why Informality PersistsAccording to the ILO's most recent analysis of Georgian Labour Force Survey data, 37.1% of employed people in Georgia worked informally in 2022. The profile that emerges is…Georgia Wire · 16 Aug 2026Georgia Wire: Domestic Workers Remain Outside the Labour Code — What the Evidence Shows as the ILO Raises the IssueDomestic workers — nannies, cleaners, carers and cooks working in private homes — remain outside the effective protection of Georgia's Labour Code. The best available estimate puts their…Global Wire · 13 Aug 2026The EU Platform Work Directive: What a Presumption of Employment Would Mean for Georgia’s CouriersThe EU's Platform Work Directive, adopted in October 2024, introduces a legal presumption that platform workers are employees when a platform directs and controls their work, and new…

Related data and standards

• Labour Market Observatory
• Labour Law Library

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Sources for this page

• ETF–Eurofound (2024). Working life in Georgia. etf.europa.eu
• Pignatti, C. (2026). Recent trends on informal employment in Georgia. ILO Working Paper 159. doi.org
• Geostat (2026). Share of informal employment in non-agricultural employment. www.geostat.ge
• ISET Policy Institute and UN Women (2021). Regulatory impact assessment of ILO C189. iset-pi.ge
• US Department of State (2025). 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Georgia. www.state.gov

Figures are from the GILS Evidence Register and the official sources shown. GILS is independent of government, trade unions, employers' organisations and the ILO.