About public sector employment statistics
Contextual information and guidance on the Scottish Government's Public Sector Employment Statistics.
Revisions policy
Outputs covered
This revisions policy describes how planned and unplanned revisions will be published. This policy covers all releases of the quarterly Public Sector Employment in Scotland Statistics output.
This policy is consistent with the principles used by the Scottish Government Statistics Group when dealing with revisions and corrections.
The cycle of planned revisions
This is a quarterly output and the planned revisions cycle will be as follows:
|
Category |
Frequency |
Scope of Revision |
Reasons |
|
1 |
Each Quarter (t) |
The previous quarter (t-1) will be revised along with any other quarters, as required. |
This revision will take into account late information from data providers and include any minor corrections. |
|
2 |
Each year (with the 3rd quarter release published in December) |
Revisions will be taken back to the start of the time-series (where appropriate). |
This revision will:
|
|
3 |
Quarter 2 |
Any required revisions to the Armed Forces data will be made. This will lead to revisions to the Reserved Public Sector, Total Public Sector Employment and Total Private Sector employment estimates. |
This revision will take into account the latest published Ministry of Defence statistics. |
|
4 |
Occasionally - announced 3 months in advance |
Applicable to all time-series. |
This revision will take in:
|
Category 1, 2, and 3 revisions will be published at the scheduled release date for the output, e.g. revisions to first quarter will be published with new second quarter data.
Arrangements for advance notes and back series data
Where category 4 revisions are planned, an advance note describing the scope and reasons for the revisions will be published, alongside the quarterly release, three months before the revision takes place. Where appropriate the historical time series will be provided. Notes detailing the change and outlining the potential impact will be included in the relevant publication.
Unplanned revisions
From time to time revisions need to be made outside of this timetable. Examples of such revisions include improvements to methodology, revisions to data that feed into the public sector employment data sets and the discovery of incorrect data through our quality assurance procedures. Each of these revisions will be examined to see if the effects are significant in terms of the degree of change and whether the changes affect the story the data portray.
If revisions arising through improvements to methodology or changes to source data are not found to be significant, they will be introduced in the next planned set of revisions according to the timetable above. However, if these revisions are thought to affect analysis or are sufficiently large, they will be introduced more quickly.
If incorrect data are discovered after publication, these too will be examined for their impact. Where the changes are significant, a correction notice will be published as soon as is practicable, whilst minor corrections will be included in the next planned release. In all cases a full explanation will be provided.
Identification of revisions
Revisions to figures included in the data tables are marked with an '[r]'.
Contact
If you have any enquiries relating to Labour Market Statistics then please contact us at:
Labour Market Statistics,
Office of the Chief Economic Adviser
E-mail: LMStats@gov.scot
For general enquiries about Scottish Government statistics please contact:
Office of the Chief Statistician
E-mail: statistics.enquiries@gov.scot