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Publication - Statistics

Labour Market Trends: August 2024

Published
13 August 2024
Directorate
Chief Economist Directorate
Topic
Business, industry and innovation, Economy, Work and skills

Employment, unemployment and economic inactivity trends, sourced from the Labour Force Survey for Scotland and the UK.

View supporting documents Supporting documents

Please note that charts 1, 3, 6, 10 and infographic charts in the PDF version of the publication have been updated to show the break in the y-axis scale. The axis breaks had previously been omitted and have been updated to ensure the charts are correctly interpreted by users. Apologies for any inconvenience this has caused.

This publication contains:

  • experimental monthly estimates of the number of payrolled employees and their median earnings and cover the period July 2024. Data are sourced from the HMRC’s Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system where people are recorded through the Real Time Information (RTI) system
  • experimental Claimant Count estimates which cover the period July 2024
  • the ONS Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity. Estimates cover the period to April to June 2024

The statistics included in this release are official statistics in development. Official statistics in development may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Key Points

  • early seasonally adjusted estimates for July 2024 from HMRC Pay As You Earn Real Time Information indicate that there were 2.47 million payrolled employees in Scotland, an increase of 0.7 per cent (16,000) compared with July 2023. This compares with the UK where the number of payrolled employees had risen by 0.8 per cent over the same period
  • early seasonally adjusted estimates for July 2024 from HMRC Pay As You Earn Real Time Information indicate that median monthly pay for payrolled employees in Scotland was £2,427, an increase of 5.8 per cent compared with July 2023. This is slightly higher than the growth in median monthly pay for the UK over the same period (5.6 per cent). Changes over time are based on median monthly pay estimates rounded to the nearest pound
  • in July 2024, the claimant count was 114,600, an increase of 4,700 (4.3 per cent) over the month and an increase of 4,600 (4.2 per cent) over the year. The claimant count unemployment rate in July 2024 was 3.9 per cent, compared with 4.7 per cent for the UK as a whole

Due to increased volatility of the ONS Labour Force Survey estimates resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes, estimates of quarterly change should be treated with additional caution and ONS recommend using them as part of the suite of labour market indicators alongside Pay As You Earn Real Time Information estimates and claimant count data.

Estimates sourced from the ONS Labour Force Survey are presented for April to June 2024, compared with the quarter before (January to March 2024). Please note percentage point changes are based on unrounded data.

  • the estimates for April to June 2024 indicate that over the quarter the unemployment rate stayed the same, while the employment rate increased and the inactivity rate decreased
  • the unemployment rate (16 and over) in Scotland was 4.4 per cent, unchanged over the quarter. Scotland's unemployment rate was slightly above the UK rate of 4.2 per cent
  • the employment rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work) in Scotland was 73.4 per cent, up 0.3 percentage points over the quarter. Scotland's employment rate was below the UK rate of 74.5 per cent
  • the economic inactivity rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 years who were not working and not seeking or available to work) in Scotland was 23.1 per cent, down 0.3 percentage points over the quarter. Scotland's economic inactivity rate was above the UK rate of 22.2 per cent

Contact

For enquiries about this publication please contact:

Labour Market Statistics,
Office of the Chief Economic Adviser
Telephone: 0131 244 6773,
E-mail: LMStats@gov.scot

For general enquiries about Scottish Government statistics please contact:

Office of the Chief Statistician
E-mail: statistics.enquiries@gov.scot

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