Labour Market Trends: April 2025

This publication contains:

• monthly estimates of the number of payrolled employees and their median earnings and cover the period March 2025. Data are sourced from the HMRC’s Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system where people are recorded through the Real Time Information (RTI) system
• Claimant Count estimates which cover the period March 2025
• the ONS Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity. Estimates cover the period to December 2024 to February 2025

The statistics included in this release are official statistics in development. Official statistics in development may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Key Points

• early seasonally adjusted estimates for March 2025 from HMRC Pay As You Earn Real Time Information indicate that there were 2.45 million payrolled employees in Scotland, a decrease of 0.4% (-11,000) compared with March 2024. This compares with the UK where the number of payrolled employees had a decrease of 0.2% over the same period
• early seasonally adjusted estimates for March 2025 from HMRC Pay As You Earn Real Time Information indicate that median monthly pay for payrolled employees in Scotland was £2,508, an increase of 5.3% compared with March 2024. This is higher than the growth in median monthly pay for the UK over the same period (4.8%). Changes over time are based on median monthly pay estimates rounded to the nearest pound
• in March 2025, the claimant count in Scotland was 108,800, a decrease of 300 (-0.3%) over the month but an increase of 3,700 (3.6%) over the year. The claimant count unemployment rate in March 2025 was 3.7%, compared with 4.6% for the UK as a whole

Due to increased volatility of the ONS Labour Force Survey estimates resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes, estimates of change should be treated with additional caution and ONS recommend using them as part of their suite of labour market indicators alongside Pay As You Earn Real Time Information estimates and claimant count data.

Estimates sourced from the ONS Labour Force Survey are presented for December 2024 to February 2025, compared with the quarter before (September to November 2024). Please note percentage point changes are based on unrounded data.

• the estimates for December 2024 to February 2025 indicate that over the quarter, the economic inactivity rate decreased while the employment and unemployment rates increased
• the estimated unemployment rate (16 and over) in Scotland was 4.2%, up 0.3 percentage points over the quarter. Scotland's unemployment rate was below the UK rate of 4.4%
• the estimated employment rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work) in Scotland was 74.3%, up 0.2 percentage points over the quarter. Scotland's employment rate was below the UK rate of 75.1%
• the estimated economic inactivity rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 years who were not working and not seeking or available to work) in Scotland was 22.4%, down 0.5 percentage points over the quarter. Scotland's economic inactivity rate was above the UK rate of 21.4%