Public Sector Employment in Scotland Statistics for 1st Quarter 2026

Data and methodology

How to access background or source data

Tables showing the Public Sector Employment time series are available as supporting documents. These tables include comparisons for 1999 and 2019 to 2026 for the current quarter only. They give further breakdowns of the devolved and reserved public sectors for both headcount and full-time equivalent employment.

A complete time series, including all quarters back to Q1 1999, is provided in the Public Sector Employment web tables.

Revisions and Amendments

As set out in our Quarterly public sector employment statistics in Scotland revisions policy, larger revisions and amendments are typically made alongside the Quarter 3 release published in December.

Revisions made since Q1 2025 publication

Organisations that have been classified as part of the public sector within the National Accounts classifications guide since Q1 2025 have been included within the Public Sector series and additional UK bodies with sites in Scotland have been included. More information is available in the Series Reclassification Guide within the Public Sector Employment data tables.

ONS Labour Force Survey (LFS)

ONS Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates for January to March 2019 onwards were reweighted in December 2024, causing a step change discontinuity. Therefore, the LFS reweighting exercise creates a break in the series between December 2018 to February 2019 (Q4 2018) and January to March (Q1 2019) estimates for regional total employment and regional private sector employment. LFS estimates are designated as official statistics in development.

Further details of the reweighting of the ONS Labour Force Survey estimates can be found in the ONS Impact of reweighting on Labour Force Survey key indicators article.

Major Reclassifications

An outline of major reclassifications which have taken place in the Scottish public sector since 2013 are summarised on the about Public Sector Employment statistics – classifications webpage

A separate public sector series excluding the effects of these major reclassifications has been included in this publication to show the impact of the reclassifications on the number of people employed in the public sector.

More information is available on the Public Sector Employment Web Section.

National Accounts Classifications

An outline of National Accounts classifications which have taken place in the Scottish public sector since 2015 are summarised on the about Public Sector Employment statistics – classifications webpage

Public Sector Employment Web section

The Public Sector Employment Web section provides additional information to this National Statistics publication, including the Public Sector Employment data web tables

The web section includes detailed information on:

• local government employment by local authority.  A time series of total local government employment from Q1 1999 and by gender from Q1 2011
• detailed tables showing a full time series of data for all quarters back to Q1 1999 are also available to download
• background notes outlining the methodology used to compile this series
• the organisations included in each category within the public sector

UK Comparisons

Public Sector Employment for Government Office Regions and Nations of the UK can be found in the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Public Sector Employment publication tables.

Comparisons to UK data should be made using non-seasonally adjusted UK data.

Background Notes

Statistics prior to Q1 2008 are estimates. These have been calculated using the total UK reserved public sector employment figure and applying to Scotland on a pro-rata basis, as regional level data has only been collected from Q1 2008 onwards.

Data collected for our public sector employment estimates are collected from a range of providers. These include through ONS surveys, devolved administration surveys, and admin sources, a full list of which can be found in the ONS PSE QMI report. Data collected through the ONS Quarterly Public Sector Employment Survey (QPSES) ask organisations for total headcount estimates and full-time equivalent (FTE) estimates based on an employee’s contracted hours, regardless of contract type. However, some data collected by other agencies include FTE estimates based on an employee’s actual worked hours during the survey reference period. We are working with ONS and other agencies to investigate this further.

Further background notes about the information contained in our PSE series are available on the about Public Sector Employment statistics - background notes webpage

Devolved and Reserved Civil Service Tables

Tables and commentary on the devolved and reserved civil service are not included in this summary. However, the full time series of data for the devolved civil service including Scottish Government, Scottish Government Agencies, Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal and Non-Ministerial Departments and the reserved civil service are updated and published in our associated Public Sector Employment statistics web tables. Tables 5 and 6 provide the headcount figures for the devolved and reserved civil service and Tables 12 and 13 provide the full-time equivalent figures.

Related Publications

Cabinet Office publish annual Civil Service employment statistics. These statistics provide more detailed information by ethnicity, gender, disability, age and earnings for Q2 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 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.

Further information on employment in the Scottish Government is also published quarterly in the Scottish Government Workforce Information publication.

The National Public Bodies Directory provides a summary of key information on Scotland's national devolved public bodies.

Next Publication: September 2026