High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Tuesday 21 February 2012
Employment Rate (Based on population aged 16-64)
Scotland has the highest employment rate of the four countries in the United Kingdom. From the mid 1990s, Scotland's employment rate was steadily increasing, reaching a peak of 74.9 per cent during the second calendar quarter of 2007 (Apr-Jun), although over the past three years, Scotland's employment rate, along with the other countries of the UK, has been at a lower level as a result of the economic conditions. During the first three quarters of 2010 the employment rate in England was higher than in Scotland.
In the latest calendar quarter (Oct-Dec 2011), Scotland had an employment rate of 70.7 per cent, making it the highest of all UK countries. This compares to an employment rate of 70.5 per cent in England for the same quarter.
Last year in Q4 2010 Scotland had an employment rate of 71.1 per cent (highest) and England had an employment rate of 70.7 per cent (second highest), giving a gap of 0.3 percentage points in favour of Scotland.
So over the year the gap has shifted by 0.1 percentage points to Scotland’s detriment – but still maintaining Scotland’s relative position as the top performing country in the UK on labour market participation. Please note that the 0.1 percentage point shift is based on unrounded figures.
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Source: Labour Force Survey, Seasonally Adjusted data, Office for National Statistics
The employment rate in Scotland, using the European age definition (15-64), in 2010 was 69.8% which is 0.8 percentage points lower than the previous year. Compared to the other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Scotland has moved from 11th position to having the 13th highest employment rate. Between 2009 and 2010 the gap in employment rates between Scotland and the country with the 5th highest rate (Netherlands in 2009 and now Denmark in 2010) decreased from 5.0 percentage points in 2009 to 3.7 percentage points in 2010.
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Source: OECD, Annual Population Survey
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