Labour Market Statistics for 16 to 24 year olds: Scotland and the United Kingdom - October 2023 to September 2024

This publication contains the latest estimates of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity for 16 to 24 year olds. Estimates are for Scotland and the United Kingdom and cover the period October 2023 to September 2024. Data are sourced from the Annual Population Survey (APS), first released on 11 December 2024 by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

ONS have carried out analysis to assess the quality of APS estimates. The impact of falling sample sizes in addition to the APS estimates not being reweighted to use the latest population totals have led ONS, in agreement with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), to temporarily suspend the accreditation of all APS-based outputs. All ONS APS-based outputs will be re-designated as official statistics in development until further review.

Further details on this can be found in the exchange between ONS and OSR: Michael Keoghan  to Siobhan Tuohy-Smith: Request to suspend APS accreditation – Office for Statistics Regulation

Key Points

The latest ONS Annual Population Survey (APS) data are for October 2023 to September 2024. The latest estimates for 16 to 24 year olds in Scotland show the employment rate had decreased over the year, the unemployment rate had increased, and the economic inactivity rate had increased.

In Scotland in October 2023 to September 2024:

• the estimated employment rate for 16 to 24 year olds was 55.9 per cent
• the estimated unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds was 10.4 per cent
• the estimated economic inactivity rate for 16 to 24 year olds was 37.6 per cent

Compared with the previous year:

• the employment rate for 16 to 24 year olds decreased by 1.0 percentage point
• the unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds increased by 0.7 percentage points
• the inactivity rate for 16 to 24 year olds increased by 0.6 percentage points

Compared with the United Kingdom as a whole:

• the estimated employment rate for 16 to 24 year olds in Scotland was higher (55.9 per cent compared to 52.0 per cent)
• the estimated unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds in Scotland was lower (10.4 per cent compared to 11.4 per cent)
• the estimated inactivity rate for 16 to 24 year olds in Scotland was lower (37.6 per cent compared to 41.3 per cent)

Estimates by sex and local authority have been removed from this publication to allow for additional quality assessment of the data. This is due to increased uncertainty around the survey estimates. While estimates remain robust for headline measures at Scotland level, an increasing number of estimates for smaller groups of the population are based on a small sample size which should be used with caution. Further information on the quality of the APS can be found in the introduction.