Public Sector Employment in Scotland Statistics for 4th Quarter 2022

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 2022.

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Table 1 Number of people employed by public and private sector; Scotland, Headcount

This worksheet contains one table. Some cells refer to notes which can be found under the table. When notes are mentioned the note marker is presented in square brackets.

Some shorthand may have been used in the spreadsheet, r - revision, p.p. - percentage points

Quarter revisions [note 7] Total Employment Level [note 6] Private Sector Level [note 2] Private Sector Percentage of total employment [note 2] Public Sector Level Public Sector Percentage of total employment Estimated Private Sector (including major reclassifications) Level [note 3][note 4] Estimated Private Sector (including major reclassifications) Percentage of total employment [note 3] [note 4] Estimated Public Sector (excluding major reclassifications) Level [note 3][note 5] Estimated Public Sector (excluding major reclassifications) Percentage of total employment [note 3] [note 5]
Q4 1999 2,276,000 1,725,100 75.8% 551,100 24.2% 1,744,000 76.6% 533,000 23.4%
Q4 2016 r 2,612,000 2,054,700 78.7% 557,800 21.3% 2,083,000 79.7% 529,000 20.3%
Q4 2017 r 2,640,000 2,082,000 78.9% 557,700 21.1% 2,110,000 79.9% 530,000 20.1%
Q4 2018 r 2,650,000 2,098,900 79.2% 550,800 20.8% 2,111,000 79.7% 539,000 20.3%
Q4 2019 r 2,640,000 2,079,800 78.8% 560,500 21.2% 2,095,000 79.4% 545,000 20.6%
Q4 2020 r 2,608,000 2,035,900 78.0% 572,600 22.0% 2,054,000 78.8% 554,000 21.2%
Q4 2021 r 2,650,000 2,061,400 77.8% 588,600 22.2% 2,080,000 78.5% 570,000 21.5%
Q4 2022 2,720,000 2,125,700 78.1% 594,500 21.9% 2,145,000 78.8% 576,000 21.2%
Change on year to Q4 2022 70,300 64,340 0.4 p.p. 5,960 -0.4 p.p. 65,000 0.4 p.p. 5,000 -0.4 p.p.
% change on year Q4 2022 2.7% 3.1% 1.0% 3.1% 1.0%

p.p. - percentage points, r - revision

Notes:

Note 1: Employment figures have been rounded to the nearest hundred, unless otherwise stated. Change on year rounded to the nearest ten. Totals may not equal the sum of individual parts due to rounding.

Note 2: Private sector is derived as the difference between the Labour Force Survey 'Total employment' workforce based estimate for the whole of Scotland (not seasonally adjusted) and the public sector estimate (derived from individual organisation statistical returns).

Note 3: Major reclassifications include: Royal Bank of Scotland plc, Lloyds Banking Group plc, Northern Rock plc, Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance, Lloyds Bank Asset Finance, Scottish Widows, Direct Line, Royal Mail Group plc, Post Office Ltd (until Q2 2006), Network Rail, Registered Social Landlords and Train Operating Companies.

Note 4: Private sector including major reclassifications includes the figures for the above organisations in the private sector series when they were part of the public sector and are rounded to the nearest thousand.

Note 5: Public sector excluding major reclassifications excludes the figures for the above organisations from the public sector series when they were part of the public sector and are rounded to the nearest thousand.

Note 6: Total employment figures are rounded to the nearest thousand and are taken from Labour Force Survey (LFS).

Note 7: There have been revisions to this data, in particular to the private sector figures due to the ONS Labour Force Survey estimates for total employment being reweighted in June 2022 (resulting in small revisions from Q1 2020 to Q4 2021). There were also changes to the public sector values due to revisions in Local Government figures among other small changes

Contact

Email: LMStats@gov.scot

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