Public Sector Employment in Scotland Statistics for 4th Quarter 2022

Statistics 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 December 2022.


Table 3: Total devolved public sector employment by sector; Scotland, Headcount [note 1] [note 4]

This worksheet contains one table. Some cells refer to notes which can be found under the table. When notes are mentioned the note marker is presented in square brackets.

Some shorthand may have been used in the spreadsheet, r - revision

Not Seasonally Adjusted

Quarter revisions [note 5] Total Devolved Public Sector NHS Civil Service Police and Fire Services [note 2] Further Education Colleges [note 3] Other Public Bodies [note 3] Local Government [note 2] Public Corporations
Q4 1999 474,300 129,800 14,500 - 15,700 8,500 296,000 9,000
Q4 2016 r 501,200 162,300 16,800 27,900 13,900 15,300 242,000 23,000
Q4 2017 r 502,000 163,400 17,300 27,600 13,900 15,400 241,000 23,000
Q4 2018 r 496,000 163,800 18,200 27,800 14,000 15,900 248,000 8,000
Q4 2019 r 504,200 165,900 20,600 28,100 14,200 15,900 251,000 8,000
Q4 2020 r 518,000 172,600 21,600 28,200 13,400 15,700 253,000 14,000
Q4 2021 r 533,300 180,700 24,400 28,100 13,300 15,200 259,000 13,000
Q4 2022 538,700 180,400 27,500 27,600 13,100 15,600 261,000 14,000
Change on year to Q4 2022 5,380 -300 3,100 -420 -190 360 2,490 330
% change on year Q4 2022 1.0% -0.2% 12.7% -1.5% -1.5% 2.4% 1.0% 2.5%

Notes:

Note 1: Employment figures have been rounded to the nearest hundred, with the exception of local government and public corporation figures which are rounded to the nearest thousand; change on year rounded to the nearest ten; percentages are based on unrounded figures. "-" denotes blank entries. Totals may not equal the sum of individual parts due to rounding.

Note 2: Police and Fire Reform: From Q2 2013 Police and Fire Services have been reclassified as central government rather than local government (as their predecessors were). All police staff are employed by the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) whether deployed with the SPA or with the Police Service of Scotland.

Note 3: Information for further education colleges in Scotland is based on collected information from Q4 2010. The method used to create the back series is detailed in the background notes of this publication.

Note 4: For further information on interpreting these series, see the series reclassification guide or background notes of the publication.

Note 5: There have been revisions to this data, in particular revisions in Local Government figures, changing the headcounts for the Local Government and Total Devolved Public Sector columns

Contact

Email: LMStats@gov.scot

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