The average Georgian wage reached 2,389 lari a month — and ICT pays nearly double it

The 2,389.3 lari figure is a national average across every sector and both sexes, and almost nobody earns exactly it. The useful version is the spread: 4,400.4 lari in information and communication, 4,074.1 in finance and insurance, 3,304.8 in professional, scientific and technical work, against a business-sector average of 2,471.5. A landlord letting a renovated two-room flat in central Tbilisi is not pricing against the national average — they are pricing against the top three of those lines, which is a much smaller pool of households than the city's population suggests.

Nominal pay grew 177.3 lari a month over the year. That is the raw headroom a sitting tenant gained, before inflation takes its share of it. For a landlord renewing a lease, the honest comparison is between that 8% and whatever increase you are contemplating: an uplift materially above it is asking the tenant to spend a larger share of their income on housing than they did last year, and the usual outcome is a move rather than a refusal. Against that, a renewal at a modest increase keeps a known payer and avoids the void and the agency fee that a re-let costs.

Construction paid 3,496.6 lari, well above the national average but up only 0.8% over the year — the weakest growth among the high-paying sectors listed. Labour is one of the larger inputs in a build, so flat construction wages take some pressure off project budgets at a time when the sector is growing more slowly than the economy. A buyer negotiating on an off-plan unit can reasonably ask why a developer's pricing assumes rising costs when the wage line of those costs is close to stationary.

Tbilisi and Mtskheta-Mtianeti recorded the highest average salaries of any region. That concentration is the reason the capital's long-let market behaves differently from the coast's: Tbilisi rents are underwritten by resident salaries paid twelve months a year, while Batumi's are underwritten by a season. It also explains why wage growth of 8% is a more interesting number for a Tbilisi landlord than visitor statistics are, and why the reverse holds in Adjara.