Labour Market Trends: September 2024
Employment, unemployment and economic inactivity trends, sourced from the Labour Force Survey for Scotland and the UK.
This publication contains:
- experimental monthly estimates of the number of payrolled employees and their median earnings and cover the period August 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 August 2024
- the ONS Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity. Estimates cover the period to May to July 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 August 2024 from HMRC Pay As You Earn Real Time Information indicate that there were 2.46 million payrolled employees in Scotland, an increase of 0.1 per cent (2,000) compared with August 2023. This compares with the UK where the number of payrolled employees had risen by 0.4 per cent over the same period
- early seasonally adjusted estimates for August 2024 from HMRC Pay As You Earn Real Time Information indicate that median monthly pay for payrolled employees in Scotland was £2,443, an increase of 6.0 per cent compared with August 2023. This is lower than the growth in median monthly pay for the UK over the same period (6.2 per cent). Changes over time are based on median monthly pay estimates rounded to the nearest pound
- in August 2024, the claimant count in Scotland was 115,400, an increase of 2,100 (1.9 per cent) over the month and an increase of 7,000 (6.5 per cent) over the year. The claimant count unemployment rate in August 2024 was 4.0 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 our 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 May to July 2024, compared with the quarter before (February to April 2024). Please note percentage point changes are based on unrounded data.
- the estimates for May to July 2024 indicate that over the quarter the unemployment rate decreased, while the employment rate increased and the inactivity rate decreased
- the unemployment rate (16 and over) in Scotland was 4.2 per cent, down 0.5 percentage points over the quarter. Scotland's unemployment rate was slightly above the UK rate of 4.1 per cent
- the employment rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work) in Scotland was 74.2 per cent, up 1.2 percentage points over the quarter. Scotland's employment rate was below the UK rate of 74.8 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 22.3 per cent, down 0.8 percentage points over the quarter. Scotland's economic inactivity rate was above the UK rate of 21.9 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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