Local Area Labour Markets In Scotland

8th July 2012

Scotland's Chief Statistician 0n 5th July 2012 published statistics on Local Area Labour Markets in Scotland from the Annual Population Survey (APS).

This publication presents annual estimates for a wide range of labour market indicators across local authority areas in Scotland.

Some of the main findings for 2011 are:

*Employment rates varied across Scotland local authorities, from 61.0 per cent in North

*Ayrshire to 81.3 per cent in the Shetland Islands. This compares to an employment rate of 70.7 per cent in Scotland8

*The majority of local authorities (21 in total) experienced a reduction in employment rates over the year, while all 32 local authorities saw reductions between 2008 (start of the recession) and 2011, reflecting the continuing challenging economic circumstances

*The proportion of young people (aged 16 - 19) who are NEET has decreased over the year, (not statistically significant). This decrease has been driven by reduction in the number of young women who were NEET (statistically significant)

*Over the year the number of people in employment working full time has remained relatively stable but since 2008 has decreased, with decreases seen in 27 Local Authorities

*Underemployed workers (those looking to work more hours) are more likely to be part-time female and full-time male workers. In 2011 there were 204,200 underemployed workers in Scotland, this is 8.3 per cent of all people in employment (aged 16 and over)

Trends in Scotland's labour market are monitored monthly using the quarterly LFS. Monthly briefings based on secondary analysis of this data are available from the Scottish Government website. As the quarterly LFS has a smaller sample size it cannot be used to monitor trends below Scotland-level so the APS remains the best source for local area labour market trends.

Related information

The APS is an annual version of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the official source of many labour market and lifelong learning indicators for Scotland and its local authority areas. The publication provides a summary of data covering key indicators such as employment rates, underemployment (employed people who would be willing to work extra hours), rates of young people not in education, employment or training and economic inactivity.

Note that results for unemployment are not included in this publication as the model based local authority estimates will not be published by ONS until July 18, 2012.

The data covers the calendar year, January to December 2011.

Underemployment includes all employed persons aged 16 and over who during the reference week were willing to work additional hours.

The full statistical publication -
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/07/9077