Globally, informal employment accounts for 60% of total employment, equivalent to around 2 billion informal workers. Most of them (90%) are concentrated in developing countries (ILO 2018). According to the latest data, 8 out of 10 businesses in the world are informal, while 6 out of 10 employees are informal workers (OECD 2021). In the early period of the pandemic crisis, the ILO predicted that the COVID 19 pandemic would hit the informal sector the most - with up to 1.6 billion people losing more than 60% of their income, resulting in poverty levels increased from 26% to 59% among the informally employed (ILO 2020). The current escalation of poverty is equal to a 30-year lag, which in the case of Georgia equals the its entire period of being independent republic.

There are many reasons why the sector of informal employment is the most vulnerable to the pandemic. Among these reasons are the level of country's economic development, the sustainability of economic production, the country’s social protection policy, the specifics of economic sector, the measures of COVID restriction, and the socio-economic profile of the informally employed. Like as the COVID 19 virus attacked the most exposed sides of human’s health and exacerbated chronic diseases, the identical effect had COVID pandemic on the socio-economic fabric of society - causing enormous damage to the most frail and vulnerable groups and sentencing them to chronic poverty.

Today, Georgia is fighting against another wave of the pandemic. Consequently, it is too early to discuss the final damage that COVID 19 has done to informal employees. However, based on various data, including the Revenue Service representatives, more than half a million self-employed people lost their income by 2020.[1] The exact damage in long-term is still unknown. There have been organized number of protests by informal workers since the restrictions were imposed. Among the protesters were extraterritorial petty-traders who were crossing the Sarpi border on daily basis,[2] travel guides employed by tour-operators,[3] agricultural market traders,[4] drivers of intercity minibuses,[5] and, petty-retailers of clothing and household items in the vicinity of the Station Square.  They demanded the state-provided benefits, social support for the alleviation of acute social and work-related challenges, and help for handling the everyday challenges. The way in which state apparatus responded to their demands was largely due to what policy instruments the state had in place to identify these challenges and assess their needs.[6]

The aim of this study is to study the Anti-Crisis measures and social policies that the state has developed in 2020 to support ones who were most affected by the pandemic, in particular, informal workers. The paper seeks to analyze how state apparatus conceived and responded to informal employment before the pandemic, and how did the pandemic affect this outlook. In addition, what opportunities are there for policy transformation towards the informal employment? As history teaches us, the crisis of given magnitude has been provoking the paradigm shifts in the understanding of ​​community and commonwealth. And, perhaps, now is the most proper time to initiate a political discussion on the questions of informality, related social policies and the ways to ensure the informal workers’ engagement in the decision-making process. 

The full article can be found in the attached document

An article was prepared in the framework of the Project – "Improving the rights of employees in the formal and informal sectors". The Project is funded by the Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF)

The opinions expressed in the article are the sole responsibility of the author and may not express the position of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF)