A member of the United National Movement, Tina Bokuchava, in her speech at the plenary session of the Parliament of Georgia, stated: “In 2013, the number of empoyed people was 1,700,012 whilst today that number is 1,700,080. However, a very big part of these people is employed in the public sector. They are the party activists.”

FactCheck

took interest in the accuracy of the statement.

Before we start the immediate verification of the fact’s accuracy, it is necessary to mention that Tina Bokuchava has seemingly made a mechanical error in numbers and named 1,700,012 and 1,700,080 instead of 1,712,000 and 1,780,000 respectively. As there is no evident logical aim in giving the wrong figures, FactCheck

would not take the aforementioned inaccuracy into account for the final verdict.

National Statistics Office of Georgia publishes

annual data in regard to employment numbers in the country. Although, employment figures for 2016 has not been published yet. As of 2013, number of employed people in Georgia was 1,712,100, whilst in 2015 that number rose to 1,779,900 which is 67,800 more as compared to 2013 data.

Table 1: 

Distribution of Employees based on Institutional Sectors (thousand persons)

Year	Total	State Sector	%	Private Sector	%
2009	1 656,1	298,8	18	1 357,8	82
2010	1 628,1	285,8	17.6	1 342,2	82.4
2011	1 664,2	266,4	16	1 397,8	84
2012	1 724,0	273,7	15.9	1 450,4	84.1
2013	1 712,1	247,3	14.4	1 464,7	85.6
2014	1 745,2	251,2	14.4	1 494,0	85.6
2015	1 779,9	274,9	15.4	1 505,0	84.6

According to 2013 data, 14.4% of all working people, or 247,300 employees were working in the public sector, whilst the number of workers in the non-state sector equalled 1,464,700 which constituted 85.6% of total number of employed people. In 2015, the number of employees in the public sector increased by 27,600 as compared to 2013, whilst the share of public servants in total employment rose from 14.4% to 15.4%. In regard to employment in the non-state sector, 1,505,000 people were employed in a non-state sector, which was 40,300 more as compared to 2013.

If we take a look at the statistics of the previous years, we will sea that number of employees in the public service used to decrease annually from 2009 until 2012. In 2012, the number of public servants increased by around 7,000 and in 2014-2015 their number used to grow annually. In regard to non-state sector, the number of employment there has been increasing from 2009 until 2015, with 2010 being the only exception.

Conclusion

According to 2013 data, there were 1,712,100 employed people in Georgia. In 2015, that number rose to 1,779,900 which is 67,800 more as compared to 2013 figure. In 2013 247,300 persons were employed in the public sector, which constituted 14.4% of total employment in the country. In 2015, that number reached 274,900 which is 27,600 more as compared to 2013 and constitutes 15.4% of total employment in the country.

The trend, highlighted by the MP, in regard to increasing number of employees in the public sector is indeed real. However, more people got employment in the non-public sector than in the public sector (with the correlation of 60/40).

It is very hard to provide a straightforward assessment of what kind of growth of jobs in public sector should be considered as a “very big part” of total employment. Therefore, FactCheck leaves Tina Bokuchava’s statement WITHOUT VERDICT.