Scotland's wellbeing economy monitor: July 2025

2. Framework of the monitor

The Wellbeing Economy Monitor consists of two components:

• National Wellbeing Economy Monitor - presents time series data across 14 wellbeing indicators, offering insights into Scotland’s performance over time, and where available, that of individual local authorities (see Section 5)
• Local Wellbeing Economy Monitor – provides annual data across 17 wellbeing indicators, offering a high-level view of each local authority’s relative wellbeing across social, environmental, and economic dimensions, alongside national comparisons (see Section 6)

The WEM was developed to provide a baseline for tracking progress towards the development of a wellbeing economy in Scotland. It is based on the monitoring of a broad range of wellbeing outcomes in the NPF ^[5] (Scotland's Wellbeing Framework). The Monitor focuses on some of the key areas where the economy and economic policy contribute to those outcomes, including those areas which influence future wellbeing.

Indicators are grouped using the four capitals approach – a framework recommended by the Advisory Group for Economic Recovery^[6] and adopted in the Economic Recovery Implementation Plan^[7]. This approach helps simplify complex relationships and highlights the interconnected drivers of economic wellbeing.

This update includes the most recent data at the time of publication. Since data sources are updated at different times throughout the year, links to original datasets are provided for readers who wish to access the latest figures.