PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT IN SCOTLAND: STATISTICS FOR 2nd QUARTER 2009
Scotland's Chief Statistician today published statistics on Public Sector Employment in Scotland. The publication provides statistics up to Quarter 2 of 2009 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 statistics in this release are produced quarterly.
The publication includes information on public sector employment in Scotland with distinctions made for employment in devolved and reserved bodies.
SECTION 1 - TOTAL PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT IN SCOTLAND
This covers total public sector employment including employment in both Scottish devolved public bodies and UK Government Departments and UK wide public bodies with a presence in Scotland.
SECTION 2 - EMPLOYMENT IN CORE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT, GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, NON MINISTERIAL DEPARTMENTS, PUBLIC CORPORATIONS, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND DEVOLVED PUBLIC BODIES IN SCOTLAND
This section focuses on employment in public authorities which are the devolved responsibility of the Scottish Government or Scottish Parliament. This includes the core Scottish Government and Agencies, local authorities, Police and Fire Services, NHS, Non-Departmental Public Bodies, Non-Ministerial Departments, Public Corporations, Ombudsmen and Commissioners and other significant national bodies.
SECTION 3 - EMPLOYMENT IN UK GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS AND UK WIDE PUBLIC BODIES WITH A PRESENCE IN SCOTLAND
This section focuses on employment in Scotland in UK Government Departments and UK wide public bodies, with a presence in Scotland, which are reserved to the UK Parliament.
SECTION 4 - SIMPLIFYING THE PUBLIC SECTOR
These statistics also cover employment within the 199 significant national public bodies which are the focus of the Scottish Government's Simplification Programme. The programme is committed to reducing the number of national public bodies by 25% by 2011. Quarterly updates will be provided in future bulletins.
Quarterly public sector employment statistics for the UK can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website at www.statistics.gov.uk
The statistics in this release are based on administrative records and surveys of individual public sector bodies. These surveys are carried out by the Scottish Government and the Office for National Statistics ( ONS). An estimate of private sector employment is also included in this release. This is derived as the difference between the Labour Force Survey employment estimate for the whole of Scotland (not seasonally adjusted) and the public sector estimate.
PUBLIC SECTOR FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS) Group plc, Lloyds Banking Group plc and Northern Rock plc
On 19 February 2009, the Office for National Statistics ( ONS) announced that the Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc ( RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group plc (previously Halifax Bank of Scotland plc and Lloyds TSB Group plc) would be classified as public corporations to take effect from 13 October 2008. As a result, employment estimates for these two banking groups have been included in the public sector employment series for the first time from Q1 2009, with revisions also made to include them in the Q4 2008 estimates.
Both RBS and Lloyds Banking Group have been included in a new category known as 'Public Sector Financial Institutions' along with Northern Rock which has already been included in the series from Q4 2007 following its earlier nationalisation. An aggregate estimate is available for these Public Sector Financial Institutions from Q4 2008 onwards in Tables 2 and 3. The size of these banking groups has the capacity to influence the aggregate public sector employment statistics with a step change in the series evident from Q4 2008. As a result, some secondary analysis is presented in Table 1 to provide users with a public sector employment series which excludes these Public Sector Financial Institutions allowing consistent comparisons to be made over time.
Further information on the reclassification of these banking groups to the public sector can be found in background note 13.
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. More detailed statistics on Local Government employment are available at www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Labour-Market/JointStaffingWatchSurvey or on request
Comments on the presentation of these statistics should be sent to: labour-market.statistics@scotland.gsi.gov.uk.