Labour Market Trends: May 2026

This publication contains:

• monthly estimates of the number of payrolled employees and their median earnings which cover the period to April 2026. 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 to April 2026
• the ONS Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity. Estimates cover the period to January to March 2026

Earnings and employment statistics from HMRC’s PAYE RTI are Accredited official statistics. All other 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 April 2026 from HMRC Pay As You Earn Real Time Information indicate that there were 2.44 million payrolled employees in Scotland, a decrease of 0.6% (-15,000) compared with April 2025. This compares with the UK where the number of payrolled employees decreased by 0.7% over the same period
• early seasonally adjusted estimates for April 2026 from HMRC Pay As You Earn Real Time Information indicate that median monthly pay for payrolled employees in Scotland was £2,659, an increase of 5.6% in nominal terms compared with April 2025. This is higher than the growth in median monthly pay for the UK over the same period (4.9%). Changes over time are based on median monthly pay estimates rounded to the nearest pound
• in April 2026, the estimated claimant count in Scotland was 109,700, an increase of 2,800 (2.6%) over the month and an increase of 4,500 (4.3%) over the year. The claimant count unemployment rate estimate in April 2026 was 3.7%, compared with 4.4% for the UK as a whole

Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates from January to March 2025 include the full effect of the improvements in LFS data collection and sampling methods introduced by ONS from January 2024 onwards. Caution should be taken when drawing conclusions from short-term changes and ONS advise users to focus on long-term movements in the data. Some volatility will remain particularly for estimates for mid-2023 and throughout 2024 where sample sizes are smaller. Therefore, ONS continue to recommend using the LFS estimates as part of the wider suite of labour market indicators, alongside Claimant Count and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information estimates.

Latest estimates sourced from the ONS Labour Force Survey are for January to March 2026, compared with the year before (January to March 2025). Please note percentage point changes are based on unrounded data.

• estimates for January to March 2026 indicate that over the year, the unemployment and economic inactivity rates increased while the employment rate decreased
• the estimated unemployment rate (16 and over) in Scotland was 4.4%, up 0.1 percentage points over the year. Scotland's unemployment rate was below the UK rate of 5.0%
• the estimated employment rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work) in Scotland was 73.7%, down 0.8 percentage points over the year. Scotland's employment rate was below the UK rate of 75.0%
• 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 22.7%, up 0.7 percentage points over the year. Scotland's economic inactivity rate was above the UK rate of 20.9%