Galt & Taggart released a weekly review which revealed that Georgia’s unemployment rate is expected to decline to 13.5% by the end of 2025.
Despite this positive forecast, recent figures from the first quarter of 2025 offer a more mixed picture. The unemployment rate rose to 14.7%, up 0.6 percentage points year-on-year, driven largely by a 3% drop in self-employment and a modest 0.2% expansion in the labor force.
Over the course of this period, Georgia’s labor force totaled 1.63 million, with 1.39 million employed (a 0.5% decline y/y) and 239,400 people unemployed, marking a 4.7% increase year-on-year.
The number of hired employees saw a slight increase of 0.6% y/y, now accounting for 68.7% of total employment, while the share of self-employed individuals declined further. The labor force participation rate also edged down by 0.2 percentage points to 54.8%.