UK Employer Skills Survey 2022 – Scotland Report

Employer characteristics

The population of employers for the ESS 2022 included all establishments that had at least two people working at them (including owners and working proprietors). An “establishment” is a single site of an organisation, meaning interviews were carried out with an individual at each local office (rather than a single “head office” location with a respondent answering on behalf of the whole organisation). This reflects the fact that skills issues are felt most acutely at local level, and continues the approach taken by previous UK-wide ESS and Scottish surveys dating back to 2011.

Figure 2 shows the profile of Scottish employers and of employment by size for this population. Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures estimate that in March 2022 there were 149,992 establishments in Scotland employing around 2.46 million people between them.

The Scottish employer population is predominantly made up of small establishments: half of employers have between 2 and 4 staff (50%) and almost two-fifths have between 5 and 24 staff (39%). However, these smaller employers employ 8% and 24% of the workforce respectively. Employers with 100 or more staff make up 2% of establishments but employ 44% of the workforce.

Smaller employers with 2 to 4 employees accounted for half of all establishments in Scotland

Source: ONS Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), March 2022.

The largest sectors in the Scottish economy in terms of number of establishments are Business Services, and Wholesale and Retail (accounting for 20% and 19% of all establishments in Scotland respectively); the smallest are Financial Services and Public Administration (both 2%).

In terms of employment, Health and Social Work (16% of the total workforce), Business Services (16%) and Wholesale and Retail (14%) are the largest sectors.

It should be noted that the weighted population used for reporting is 151,395 units (compared with 149,992 in the IDBR population). This difference is a residual difference due to non-response weighting. More information about the weighting of the survey can be found in the technical report published on the Department for Education’s website.

The largest sectors in Scotland were Business Services and Wholesale and Retail, comprising 20% and 19% of all establishments respectively

Source: ONS Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), March 2022