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Publication - Statistics

Employer Skills Survey 2024 - Scotland

Published
8 October 2025
From
Minister for Higher and Further Education, +1 more … Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills
Directorate
Learning Directorate, +1 more … Lifelong Learning and Skills Directorate
Topic
Education, Work and skills

Scotland results from the UK Employer Skills Survey 2024

Supporting documents

Employer characteristics

The survey population for the ESS 2024 included all sites that had at least 2 people on the payroll (including owners and working proprietors). A “site” is defined here as 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 is in recognition of 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 2024 there were 147,947 sites in Scotland employing around 2.49 million people between them.

The employer population in Scotland is predominantly made up of small sites: 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 sites but employ 44% of the workforce. These figures are unchanged from the population profile in the 2022 survey.

Smaller employers with 2 to 4 employees accounted for half of all sites in Scotland, but employed 8% of the workforce.

Figure 2: Employer and employment profile by site size in Scotland in March 2024

Figure 2 shows employer and employment profile by site size in Scotland in March 2024. In March 2024 the Office for National Statistics estimates there were 147,947 sites in Scotland, employing 2,490,000 people. Half the sites in Scotland employed between 2-4 staff (50%) followed by 39% of sites employing 5 to 24 staff. Medium and large sites made up a smaller proportion of sites in Scotland, with 6% of sites employing 25-49 staff, 3% employing 50-99 staff and 2% employing 100 or more employees. Out of the workforce in Scotland, just over two fifths (44%) of Scottish employees worked on a site with 100 or more staff, despite these large employers only making up 2% of the site profile. Employers with 5-24 staff employed 24% of the total Scottish workforce, followed by sites with 25-49 and 50-99 staff, who employed 12% of the workforce equally. Sites with 2-4 employees employed the smallest proportion of the workforce (8%).

Source: ONS Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), March 2024.

As shown in Figure 3, the largest sectors in the Scottish economy in terms of number of sites are Business Services and Wholesale and Retail (consisting of 20% and 19% of all Scottish sites respectively). The smallest sectors are Financial Services and Public Administration (both 2%).

In terms of employment, the largest sectors are Health and Social Work (16% of the total workforce), Business Services (15%) and Wholesale and Retail (13%). The smallest are Information and Communications (3%) and Financial Services (3%).

The largest sectors in the Scottish economy were Business Services and Wholesale and Retail, comprising 20% and 19% of the workforce respectively.

Figure 3: Employer and employment profile by sector in Scotland in March 2024

Figure 3 shows the employer and employment profile by sector in Scotland in March 2024. By site profile, Business Services made up the highest proportion of all employers (19%). This was followed by 18% in Wholesale & Retail, Hotels & Restaurants (11%) and Construction (10%). Health and Social Work, and Business Services made employed the largest proportions of the Scottish workforce (16% each).

Source: ONS Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), March 2024

Contact

Email: FHEstatistics@gov.scot

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