About public sector employment statistics

Scottish Government publications

Background quality and methodology information on the Scottish Government's Public Sector Employment Statistics, including results from the work of a cross-departmental project, led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), to improve the quality and timeliness of public sector employment statistics.

The most recent and previous versions of the quarterly statistics are available via a search of all Scottish Government publications.

The web-tables provide information on overall public sector employment in Scotland and employment in the devolved public sector in Scotland.

Scottish Government related links

The Scottish Government maintain a directory of key information on Scotland's national devolved public bodies.

This official statistics publication presents data on the Scottish Government’s workforce for each quarter from 2012. The statistics show: numbers of directly employed staff by category, numbers of non-directly employed workers by category, staff sickness absence, and staff diversity information.

Other

Estimates of people employed in the public and private sectors in the UK are published quarterly by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Cabinet Office publish annual Civil Service employment statistics. These statistics provide more detailed information by ethnicity, gender, disability, age and earnings for Q1 each year. It is recommended that the Quarterly Public Sector Employment statistics are used when seeking to measure the size of the civil service over time. The Civil Service employment statistics bulletin was published by the ONS prior to 2019.

Further information on employment in the NHS in Scotland is published quarterly in the NHSScotland Workforce report.

Further information on employment in Social Security Scotland is available, and updated quarterly.