Public sector employment in Scotland: statistics for third quarter 2018

About this publication

The statistics in this release are based on administrative records and surveys of individual public sector bodies carried out by the Scottish Government and the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is a snapshot of employment as at September 2018. The publication includes information on public sector employment in Scotland with distinctions made for employment in devolved bodies and reserved bodies (located in Scotland). The public sector is defined based on UK National Accounts definitions.

Major Reclassifications

The estimates of public and private sector employment published in this month’s release have been impacted by the reclassification of Scottish Registered Social Landlords, which are included in the private sector for September 2018 but are included in the public sector for earlier time periods. This reclassification has resulted in around 15,000 employees who were included in the public sector for June 2018 being included in the private sector estimates for September 2018.

An outline of major reclassifications which have taken place in the Scottish public sector since 2013 are outlined here: https://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Labour-Market/PublicSectorEmployment

A separate public sector series excluding the effects of 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 outlined here: https://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Labour-Market/PublicSectorEmployment

Public Sector Employment Web section

The Public Sector Employment Web section provides additional information to this National Statistics publication http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Labour-Market/PublicSectorEmployment

It contains detailed information including:

• Employment levels for public bodies in Scotland for 16-24 year olds (Q1 2013, Q1 2014, Q1 2015, Q1 2016, Q1 2017 and Q1 2018).
• 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 - 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 Publication.

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

See the regional tables at http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pse/public-sector-employment/index.html.

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 at the following web section:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Labour-Market/PublicSectorEmployment/SourcesDef

Next Publication: March 2019