Employment and Unemployment Markers in the Current Situation
Authors: Lela Tetradze Lela Tetradze 
Published: October 2021

One of the major challenges for the economic development of Georgia is how to increase the rate of employment and decrease the rate of unemployment. At the current stage of economic and social development of Georgia, it is very important to raise an employment rate and to decrease an unemployment rate. This complex problem is subject to constant changes over time. Therefore, the continuous research in this field is and will stay very important.
It is a priority for the economic development of the country to make relevant political steps to decrease unempoyment and increase employment. In order to develop efficient economic policy to decrease unemployment and increase employment, it is important to conduct a thorough market analysis and implement necessary steps to get better results. This article analyzes the current situation in terms of employment and unemployment, provides relevant latest data and describes the existing circumstances based on the analysis of these data.
In this article, the focus is made on an important issue affecting unemployment, such as migration processes. Both external and internal migration makes an important impact on the current unemployment rate in the country. Internal migration may lead to positive as well as negative consequences. The article indicates that the consequences are considered to be positive, if the population migration is directed from the regions with the surplus of workforce to the regions with the shortage of workforce, which certainly leads to the lower unemployment rate in the country; on the other hand, the consequences are negative when an excessive number of people are migrating from certain regions, making it impossible to develop these regions in the future; also such migration increases the population in the big cities, which leads to worsened leaving conditions and poor municipal services in these cities. Besides, the article focuses on external migration processes: emigration and immigration as important aspects affecting the unemployment. Both of them have positive and negative consequences. In case of emigration, a positive consequence can be if the surplus of the workforce is leaving the country. This decreases the rate of unemployment; while the negative consequences will entail, if the workforce of employment age, mainly young people, are leaving the country. This creates a problem in the country with a low birth rate and puts even the population replacement under danger. It is well known that migration of the population influences the demographic structure of the population. The migration mostly involves the population of working age, mainly young people. The population increases in regions which are receiving migrants. Namely, the ratio of young population is increasing. In the regions from which people are emigrating, the absolute number of population is decreasing and withing the age structure, the ratio of elderly population is increasing.
Besides, the article reviews a negative impact inflicted by COVID-19, declared as the world pandemic by the World Health Orgrnization, on different social and economic aspects of the country. The article also discusses the main challenges of the labor market – the high rate of unemployment, the employment structure and a low productivity of self-employed. For the past few years, there have been drastic demographic changes, which results in a decreased workforce. These demographic changes are caused by people leaving the country as well as by the unstable birth rates. Besides, “brain drain” during the short period of time leads to the loss of intellectual asset of the country. However, if these people come back, it may have a very positive impact on the labor market: it will increase the number of qualified people in the country and it will have a positive influence on the economy of the country and its growth.
Keywords: labor market; employment; unemployment; economically active population; workforce; employed; self-employed; modern challenges; impact of the pandemic.