Scotland's Labour Market: People, Places, and Regions - Statistics from the Annual Population Survey 2019

About this Publication

This publication was formerly called Regional Employment Patterns and highlights the key statistics for Scotland's labour market from the Annual Population Survey for 2019.

Information is presented for key indicators including: employment, equality characteristics of those in employment, underemployment, inactivity, and youth participation in the labour market.

All data is for January 2019 to December 2019 and therefore precedes the impact of government policies related to COVID-19 implemented from March 2020 onward.

In this edition topical indicators are also included for industry sector by skill level, age, and long-term health conditions.

The first data from the APS was provided in 2004. As well as providing updated estimates for 2019 this publication includes trends over time and gives some indication of the variation across the 32 local authority areas within Scotland.

Comparisons are usually made with the year before or 10 years before, and in some cases in the years following the highest point following the recession. This is the seventeenth publication of the series (known as Regional Employment Patterns prior to 2019).

Access the data in this publication

Supporting data for all indicators at local authority level are available in the publication: Scotland's Labour Market- People Places and Regions – Background Tables

Annual Population Survey information is also made available on the Scottish Government Open Data Platform: www.statistics.gov.scot

The Annual Population Survey

The Annual Population Survey (APS) is the primary source for

information on local labour markets. It combines results from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the English, Welsh and Scottish

Labour Force Survey boosts. The boost increases the sample size in Scotland, which means the APS can provide more robust labour market estimates for local areas compared to the main LFS.

The Scottish Government funds the boost to the LFS sample in Scotland, taking the sample size from approximately 5,000 households each year to 17,000 households.

Level and rates are provided are estimates based on this households survey, therefore they are subject to sampling error. Confidence intervals which give an indication of the margin of error surrounding these estimates is provided in the background tables published as part of this publication. Some statistically significant changes are noted throughout the text.

It is noted in some places where estimates are not available, either due to the fact they are based on a 2 or less individual responses or they are based on a small sample and not statistically robust.

Results are provided for the calendar years (January to December) 2004 to 2019, based on the data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 18 March 2020.

ONS also release rolling quarterly datasets covering the periods April to March, July to June, and October to September. The data for these time periods have not been used or presented within this publication or associated tables.

Monthly labour Force Survey statistics

Monthly labour Market statistics based on the Labour Force Survey are published at: www.gov.scot/collections/labour-market-statistics/