Georgia’s youth unemployment rate has fallen from 39.9% in 2009 to 17.5% in 2024 — a genuine achievement that masks persistent quality and skills challenges.
Georgia’s youth unemployment rate — measured for the 15–24 age cohort — fell to 17.5 percent in 2024, its lowest level since the Geostat Labour Force Survey began systematic tracking in the mid-2000s. The decline from a peak of 39.9 percent in 2009 represents one of the most significant improvements in any Georgian labour market indicator over the past fifteen years, and it deserves recognition as a genuine policy success — even if, as GILS will argue, the nature of that success requires careful qualification.
The 2009 peak coincided with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the Russo-Georgian war, which compressed economic activity sharply and produced a severe spike in unemployment across all age groups. The recovery that followed — driven initially by construction and tourism, and more recently by the inflow of Russian and Ukrainian migrants with capital and skills — has been sustained, and youth unemployment has tracked downward through most of the intervening period.
But the headline rate obscures a more complex picture. The NEET rate — young people not in employment, education, or training — remains at approximately 28 percent. This is a substantially higher figure than the unemployment rate because it captures young people who have left the labour market entirely: those caring for family members, those in rural areas with no realistic access to formal employment, and those who have emigrated. Georgia’s youth NEET rate is one of the highest in the Eastern Partnership region and significantly above the EU average of approximately 11 percent. A young person counted as not-unemployed because they have stopped looking for work is not, by any meaningful measure, doing well.
The quality dimension of youth employment is equally concerning. Geostat data indicates that approximately 43 percent of employed young people aged 15–29 work in the informal sector, without contracts, social insurance, or access to formal grievance mechanisms. A substantial proportion work in agriculture — a sector with near-universal informality and seasonal income patterns that make sustained labour force attachment difficult. The IMF’s 2026 Article IV assessment of Georgia highlighted skills mismatch as a structural constraint on productivity growth, noting that 27 percent of employed workers are overeducated for their current positions — a figure that is disproportionately concentrated among young graduates.
The education system is producing graduates faster than the formal economy can absorb them into quality employment. Georgia has a relatively high tertiary education participation rate — approximately 67 percent of 18-24 year olds pursue some form of higher education — but the correlation between educational attainment and formal sector employment remains weak. Employers consistently report difficulty finding candidates with practical skills in technical fields; graduates consistently report inability to find employment commensurate with their qualifications. This mismatch is not primarily a supply problem or a demand problem. It is a coordination failure between educational institutions and the labour market, and it will not resolve itself without deliberate institutional intervention.
GILS Position: The decline in youth unemployment to 17.5 percent is a genuine achievement and should be acknowledged as such. But a 17.5 percent unemployment rate among 15–24 year olds — combined with a 28 percent NEET rate, 43 percent informality among young workers, and documented skills mismatch — does not constitute a youth labour market success story. It constitutes a youth labour market that is improving from a severe starting point and has a long way still to go.
GILS recommends that the government establish a Youth Labour Market Observatory — a dedicated monitoring function within the national statistical system — to track not just unemployment but NEET rates, informality, wage levels, and skills utilisation among young workers on a quarterly basis. The DWCP 2024–2026 commits to sector-level skills anticipation assessments; these should be extended to include youth employment specifically, with results shared with vocational education institutions on a systematic basis.
Read the full GILS analysis: https://labour.edu.ge/youth-labour-georgia/