Public Sector Employment in Scotland Statistics for 1st Quarter 2023

About this publication

Major Reclassifications

An outline of major reclassifications which have taken place in the Scottish public sector since 2013 are summarised on the about Public Sector Employment statistics – classifications webpage

A separate public sector series excluding the effects of these major reclassifications has been included in this publication to show the impact of the reclassifications on the number of people employed in the public sector.

More information is available on the Public Sector Employment Web Section.

National Accounts Classifications

An outline of National Accounts classifications which have taken place in the Scottish public sector since 2015 are summarised on the about Public Sector Employment statistics – classifications webpage

Public Sector Employment Web section

The Public Sector Employment Web section provides additional information to this National Statistics publication, including the Public Sector Employment data web tables

The web section includes detailed information on:

• local government employment by local authority for the current quarter. A time series of total local government employment from Q1 1999 and by gender from Q1 2011
• detailed tables showing a full time series of data for all quarters back to Q1 1999 are also available to download
• background notes outlining the methodology used to compile this series

UK Comparisons

Public Sector Employment for Government Office Regions and Nations of the UK can be found in the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Public Sector Employment publication tables.

Comparisons to UK data should be made using non-seasonally adjusted UK data.

Background Notes

Statistics prior to Q1 2008 are estimates. These have been calculated using the total UK reserved public sector employment figure and applying to Scotland on a pro-rata basis as regional level data has only been collected from Q1 2008 onwards.

Background notes about the information contained in our PSE series are available on the about Public Sector Employment statistics - background notes webpage

Devolved and Reserved Civil Service Tables

Tables and commentary on the devolved and reserved civil service are not included in this summary. However, the full time series of data for the devolved civil service including Scottish Government, Scottish Government Agencies, Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal and Non-Ministerial Departments and the reserved civil service are updated and published in our associated Public Sector Employment statistics web tables. Tables 5 and 6 provide the headcount figures for the devolved and reserved civil service and Tables 12 and 13 provide the full-time equivalent figures.

Next Publication: September 2023