2018: average monthly salaries up 6.9 per cent in Georgia

The average monthly salary in Georgia was 1068.3 GEL ($359.98/€327.99) in 2018, which is a 6.9 per cent increase compared to last year, show the latest data from the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat).

Higher salaries were observed in the following sectors:

• Financial and insurance activities – 2,236 GEL ($753.45/€686.5)
• Professional, scientific and technical activities – 1,712.2 GEL ($576.95/€525.68)
• Construction – 1,552 GEL ($522.96/€476.5)

In 2018, the average salary of women was 822.6 GEL ($277.18/€252.56), while men had an average salary of 1,280.7 GEL ($431.55/€393.2).

In 2018, the average salary of employers in the public sector was 892.1 GEL ($300.6/€273.89), while in non-public sector it was 1164 GEL ($392.22/€357.37).

Higher average salaries were in:

• Tbilisi – 1286.4 GEL ($433.47/€394.95)
• Adjara region - 866.6 GEL ($292.01/€266.06)
• Mtskheta- Mtianeti – 818.1 GEL ($275.67/€251.17)

The least average monthly salaries in 2018 were in Racha-Lechkhumi and Lower Svaneti regions and amounted to 495 GEL ($166.8/€151.98).

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.