Employment levels reach record high

Employment levels in Scotland during January to December 2015 reached a record high 2,575,500, driven by continued increases in the employment level for women.

Scotland’s Chief Statistician today published statistics on Regional Employment Patterns in Scotland from the Annual Population Survey (APS). This publication presents annual estimates for a wide range of labour market indicators across local authority area in Scotland.

The main findings for 2015 are:

• Record high employment level seen in 2015, driven by the second highest women’s employment level since comparable records began.

• Employment rates for women increased to 70.2%, the highest since comparable records began.

• The gender employment gap in Scotland was 6.0 percentage points, 4.0 percentage points lower than the UK and the lowest since comparable records began.

• Full-time employment levels for women increased to 727,500, the highest level since comparable records began.

• Youth employment rates increased in 21 local authority areas over the year as overall youth employment rate in Scotland increased by 3.0 percentage points to 56.2%.

• The youth unemployment rate in Scotland decreased by 2.7 percentage points over the year to 14.3% in 2015.

• The number of 16-19 year olds who were NEET in 2015 increased by 3,000 over the year to 23,000.

Trends in Scotland’s labour market are monitored monthly using the quarterly LFS. Monthly briefings based on secondary analysis of this data are available from the Scottish Government website. As the quarterly LFS has a smaller sample size it cannot be used to monitor trends below Scotland-level so the APS remains the best source for local area labour market trends.

About the publication

The APS is an annual version of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the official source of many labour market and lifelong learning indicators for Scotland and its local authority areas. The publication provides a summary of data covering key indicators such as employment rates, underemployment (employed people who would be willing to work extra hours), rates of young people not in education, employment or training and economic inactivity.

The data in this publication covers the calendar year, January to December 2015.

The figures released today were produced in accordance with professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.