Labour Market Trends: December 2024
Trends in Labour Market indicators from HMRC PAYE RTI, Claimant count, and ONS Labour Force Survey data covering Scotland and the UK.
About this publication
This publication contains the Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity for Scotland and the UK by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The publication also includes the experimental HMRC Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real-Time Information (RTI) and ONS Claimant Count statistics.
An Official Statistics in Development Publication for Scotland
These statistics 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.
ONS published an article on 3 December 2024 which mentions the impact of reweighting the Labour Force Survey on the key indicators for the UK.
HMRC and ONS have also published a response to the OSR RTI review.
Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.
Source of data
The information included in this publication are from three separate sources covering the time periods shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Labour market data source reference periods
Comparison over time
Comparisons with the latest data over the year have been included within the commentary of this publication. Estimates for employment, unemployment and inactivity rates are compared over the quarter and over the year.
ONS Labour Force Survey
Revisions
ONS have reweighted Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates. These are official statistics in development. On 3 December 2024, ONS published an article outlining how the estimates have been affected by reweighting. These estimates were included in the main ONS release on 17 December 2024.
The reweighted LFS estimates incorporate information on the size and composition of the UK population, based on 2022 mid-year estimates. For England, Wales and Northern Ireland, they are projected forward using scaling factors from 2021-based National Population projections, published in January 2024. For Scotland, they are projected forward using scaling factors from 2020-based National Population Projections, published in January 2023.
Given time constraints, ONS have only been able to reweight LFS estimates from January to March 2019 onwards. Therefore, the reweighting exercise creates a discontinuity between December 2018 to February 2019 and January to March 2019 where there will be a step change in LFS estimates. However, the seasonally adjusted UK levels of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity by sex and age-band have been modelled back to June to August 2011 to ensure that headline rates and levels by sex and age-band (datasets A02SA and A05SA) can be assessed without a discontinuity.
Reweighting takes account of more recent population estimates but does not address issues surrounding the increased volatility in the LFS data, resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes. An increased amount of volatility will remain until the recent improvements that have been implemented to increase response levels and the size of datasets fully feed through the survey. Therefore ONS continue to advise caution when interpreting changes in headline rates and recommend using them as part of their suite of labour market indicators, alongside Claimant Count and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) estimates.
The longer-term solution remains the replacement of the Labour Force Survey with the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS). ONS have published a Labour market transformation article providing an update on the transformation of labour market statistics.
Other sources
This publication also contains HMRC PAYE Real Time Information (RTI) on payrolled employees and their median monthly earnings. These are classed as Official Statistics in Development.
The ONS have also published experimental Claimant Count estimates which have also been included within this publication.
This release follows the ONS monthly releases of:
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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