Publication - Statistics
Public sector employment statistics: 4th quarter 2020
Statistics based on administrative records and surveys of individual public sector bodies carried out by the Scottish Government and the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is a snapshot of employment as at December 2020.
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34 page PDF
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Supporting files
4. Reserved Public Sector Employment in Scotland; Headcount
(see Table 4)
The number of people employed in the reserved public sector in December 2020 was 54,600, which is 1,720 (3.1%) lower than in December 2019.
The reserved public sector employment includes:
- Reserved Civil Service (see section 5);
- Armed Forces;
- Other Public Sector (which covers Public Sector Financial Institutions, Non-Departmental Bodies and Other Bodies).
Chart 5 shows the size of each group in the reserved public sector as at December 2020.

Source: Public Sector Employment in Scotland, Quarter 4 2020
Note: Totals may not equal the sum of the individual parts due to rounding.
The decrease over the year in the overall reserved public sector headcount was due to:
- Employment levels for Other Public Sector[5] falling by -2,080 (-9.3%) from 22,300 in December 2019 to 20,200 in December 2020;
while:
- Employment levels for the Reserved Civil Service increased by 230
(0.9%) to 24,600; - Employment levels for the Armed Forces increased by 130 (1.3%) to 9,800.

Contact
Email: LMStats@gov.scot