Scotland's Devolved Employment Services: statistical summary November 2022

Introduction

This statistical publication provides summary information on Scotland's devolved employability services. This, the 21st edition, publishes official statistics for the first four and a half years of Fair Start Scotland (FSS), from April 2018 to September 2022, and experimental statistics on employability support delivered under the No One Left Behind strategic approach, reporting on the first three and a quarter years from April 2019 to June 2022.

FSS is an employability support service, launched in April 2018, which aims to help unemployed people into sustainable employment. From April 2021, with the extension of FSS beyond the initial three year period, people who have previously received support can re-join the service. As a result of this change, the total number of FSS starts in years 1 to 3 is the same as the number of people but from the start of year 4 onwards and thus overall, the total number of FSS starts is not the same as the number of people who have received support.

No One Left Behind, introduced from April to June 2019, is a new approach to employability delivery, which moves away from funding and delivering a number of separate and distinct employability programmes to a more flexible approach.^[1]

This report is split into two main sections, the first covers official statistics related to Fair Start Scotland and the second covers experimental statistics related to the No One Left Behind strategic approach. Further detailed statistics including additional breakdowns not necessarily presented in this report are published in accompanying tables alongside the report.