Unemployment alarmingly high in Georgia

Pensioners, housewives and children outnumber the employed in Georgia. The fact that the state is the country’s largest employer, receiving funds from industry, also represents nothing good.

They have repeatedly reiterated that new enterprises are being founded while the country, with its legions of unemployed, is in a hopelessly bad situation today,”- reports the Rezonansi newspaper.

According to statistical expert Soso Archvadze, around 50 percent of our young people are unemployed today, which is why they try their luck abroad hoping to find permanent employment in a foreign country.

In our day-to-day Georgia, around 62 percent of our people are self-employed, while 38 percent work in state agencies or other organizations. In addition, self-employment is not very prestigious and a person who is hired in an organization or state institution makes nine times more money than someone who is self-employed.

It should also be noted that 80 percent of self-employed people are involved in agriculture, with its pathetically low income. This is precisely the reason why the expert thinks that the government should endeavor to provide its people with permanent employment as well as change their personnel policy.

Take Europe for example – out of 100 people, 85 are employed in different organizations, while 15 are self-employed, whereas in the USA, out of 100 people 93 serve in different organizations and 7 are self-employed,” - says the article.

As for Armenia and Azerbaijan, in these countries the government pursues a personnel policy similar to that of Georgia. However, since our country cannot forego its Euro-Atlantic aspirations, we’d better take our cue from the European states.

In Georgia, out of 100 employed people, 62 are self-employed. Hence, Statistics Service data saying that only 15 percent of our people are unemployed are false. This virtual figure has nothing to do with reality. The truth is 40 percent of Georgians are unemployed today.

Thus, Georgia with its countless benchwarmers is in a desperate situation and Georgians are in need of assistance.

Experts claim that the personnel policy is one of the government’s most pressing challenges, which needs to be addressed as soon as possible,”- concludes the author of the article.