Public Sector Employment in Scotland

Scotland’s Chief Statistician yesterday published statistics on Public Sector Employment in Scotland. It’s useful for people in the ICT area, as it provides a useful set of data from which to extrapolate volumes of IT desktop kit & software in use in Scotland.

The publication provides statistics up to Quarter 3 of 2007 and covers all of the public sector as defined by UK National Accounts. This release provides a complete quarterly series from Quarter 1 1999 onwards.

The quarterly data in this publication are not seasonally adjusted and therefore comparisons between years should only be made for the same quarter.

The main findings from Quarter 3 2007 are:
In quarter 3 (Q3) 2007, there were 575,700 people employed in the public sector which is an increase of 47,500 (9.0 per cent) since 1999 but a decrease of 6,100 (1.0 per cent) since 2006
The public sector currently accounts for 22.6 per cent of employment in Scotland which has decreased from 22.8 per cent in Q3 1999 and from 23.3% in Q3 2006

Total fulltime equivalent employment in Local Government (excluding Police, Fire and related services) was 229,700 in Q3 2007. This figure comprises: 57,700 teachers; 35,800 other education staff; 43,600 social work staff and 92,600 other staff

The transfer of staff providing central services to the Scottish police forces to the new Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA) has meant that a large number of staff who were previously employed by police boards are now classified as being employed by an NDPB. Over the year there has been a reduction of 2.4 per cent in police and related staff which will be caused mainly by the movement of staff to the SPSA

Permanent fulltime equivalent employment in the core Scottish Government departments (excluding Agencies) is up by 12.1 per cent since 1999 but is down by 0.9 per cent since last year

The total number of fulltime equivalent staff working in NDPBs and Public Corporations was 36,900 in Q3 2007. This is a decrease of 0.5% since Q3 1999 and a decrease of 0.8 per cent since Q3 2006

This publication is also the official release of Scottish Local Government employment statistics. These were previously published by the Scottish Government in the Joint Staffing Watch Survey.

Original source : New stats: Public Sector Employment in Scotland