Average salaries in Georgia increase to 1,179 GEL in Q2 2019

Average monthly earnings in Georgia increased by 76.3 GEL ($25.8/€23.2) in the second quarter (Q2) of 2019 compared to the same period of the previous year and amounted to 1,179.8 GEL ($398.5/€359.1), reports the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat).

The highest monthly earnings were observed in the following fields:

• Financial and insurance activities – 2,393.6 GEL ($808.5/€728.5)
• Professional, scientific and technical activities – 1,900.4 GEL ($641.9/€578.4)
• Information technology and communications – 1,806.4 GEL ($610.1/€549.8) 

In Q2 of 2019 the average earnings for women reached 913.5 GEL, while men averaged 1,419.8 GEL ($479.5/€432.1).

The annual growth of earnings for women amounted to 69.1 GEL ($23.3/€21), while for men it amounted to 85.9 GEL ($29/€26.1).

In Q2 of 2019 the average monthly earnings of employees in the business sector increased by 90.7 GEL ($30.6/€27.6) and amounted to 1,241.1 GEL ($419.2/€377.8).

The average monthly earnings in non-business and financial sector increased by 50.1 GEL ($16.9/€15.2) and amounted to 1,073.9 GEL ($362.7/€326).

Geostat uses the arithmetic mean to calculate average monthly salaries, although the median method is better to use when the data are significantly different from each other.

The issue is that if only the salaries of the most highly paid people are raised, this does not affect the median salary, though it increases the mean salary.

Geostat receives salaries data not from the Revenue Service of the Ministry of Finance (which records income of citizens), but from an independent survey conducted by Geostat, which collects data from about 15,000 businesses and organizations in Georgia, including large corporations, government agencies, insurance companies, banks and credit unions.

In this study, Geostat did not use individual data (that is, the salary of individuals based on their position) to calculate the median salary, but the number of employees and their salaries.