Urban vs. Rural Unemployment in Georgia: Why Are the Trends Diverging?

In the first quarter of 2025, Georgia saw urban unemployment rise by 1.4 percentage points, while rural unemployment declined by 0.6 percentage points (Geostat, 2025). This is not a one-off anomaly. A longer-term look at the data reveals that rural areas have been experiencing a gradual decline in unemployment for several quarters now. In contrast, the recent drop in urban unemployment was short-lived and has already reversed.

Interpreting these trends isn’t straightforward. A major factor in Georgia is the structure of employment. A significant share of the workforce—especially in rural areas—is self-employed, often in agriculture or informal household work. Many of these individuals are considered employed in official statistics, even if their actual income is low or unstable. As a result, rural areas tend to report lower unemployment, even when economic conditions might suggest otherwise.

This article does not aim to compare absolute levels of unemployment between cities and villages. Instead, it focuses on how these levels are changing over time. And here, the divergence is clear: rural unemployment continues to drop steadily, while urban unemployment has returned to an upward trend.

The reasons behind this divergence are complex and not yet fully understood. What we do know is that the labor force participation rate—the share of the population either working or actively seeking work—declined in both urban and rural areas in Q1 2025, by 0.2 percentage points each. This suggests that neither type of settlement is attracting significantly more people into the workforce.

Despite this shared decline in participation, the outcomes were different. In rural areas, the drop in participation came alongside a decrease in unemployment, which formally looks like an improvement. In urban areas, however, participation fell while unemployment rose, indicating that competition within the active labor force may have intensified, or that fewer job opportunities were available.

Ultimately, Georgia’s labor market is showing regionally divergent paths. The persistent decline in rural unemployment stands in contrast to renewed strain in urban areas. These patterns warrant closer analysis—not just for what they reveal about economic conditions today, but for what they might signal about the shifting geography of labor in the country.