The Scottish Government

Associated Target

To narrow the gap in participation between Scotland's best and worst performing regions by 2017.

Brief Description

The GES identifies the Government's desired characteristics of growth, which are set out as a set of golden rules - one of which is Cohesion (regional equity). The Cohesion golden rule should ensure that there is greater regional equity in sharing in increased sustainable economic growth. Over time the gap in employment rates between the best and worst performing regions will narrow.

Strategic Objective(s) to Which Indicator Relates

This indicator informs progress in relation to all five Strategic Objectives:

Wealthier and Fairer;
Healthier;
Safer and Stronger;
Smarter; and
Greener.

More Detailed Definitions

Definitions of Keywords

Participation is defined as covering those in employment - this will be measured using employment rates. Employment rates measure the proportion of the working age population - defined as females aged 16-59, and males aged 16-64 - in employment. Employment is defined as people who are employees, self employed, on government training programmes and unpaid family workers.

Regions are defined as Local Authority Areas. Local Authority areas are administrative regions within Scotland. There are 32 Local Authority Areas in Scotland.

In measuring this target, the top and bottom three Local Authorities within each year will be grouped together. As a result, the Local Authority areas included within the top and bottom three may change between years, and therefore may differ from the top and bottom three Local Authority areas in the baseline year. Using the highest and lowest areas within each year also ensures that all 32 Local Authority areas are moving in the right direction and that work on increasing employment rates in one area does not happen at the expense of work in other areas which are not currently in the worst performing Local Authority areas.

Aggregating Local Authority areas for this indicator increases the reliability of the data ensuring that changes over time are reasonably robust and are not dominated by random fluctuations in the data due to small numbers.

Evidence Source

The Annual Population Survey ( APS) will be used to measure employment rates by Local Authority areas. Data from the APS are available for regions within Scotland from 1995. Data from the Annual Population Survey are available at Local Authority level. For data below this level, proxies such as benefits data may be used.

Baseline and Past Trends

Baseline: The baseline will be calculated using 2007 data (Jan-Dec), which will be released in June 2008.

Past trends: The gap has narrowed over the period 1995-2006, from 22.5 percentage points in 1995 to 15.7 percentage points in 2006. The graph illustrates that from 2005 to 2006 there was an increase in the difference from 14.6 percentage points in 2005 to 15.7 percentage points in 2006.

Chart: Gap in employment rate between the three highest and poorest performing local authorities, 1995-2006

Source: Office of National Statistics - Annual Population Survey

Methodology

This indicator is calculated as the number of working age people in employment in each region divided by the number of working age people in each region.

The 95% confidence interval around the estimate should be no more than 2 percentage points for each region.

Data Ownership and Quality Assurance

The Annual Population Survey is a National Statistics publication.

Publication of Data

Data from the Annual Population Survey ( APS) are published on a quarterly basis by the Office for National Statistics.

The latest APS publication with figures for January to December 2006 can be found using the following link. Table 1 provides working age employment rates by local authority.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/06/26165000/0

A publication of headline figures from the APS is published in June each year by the Scottish Government covering the period January to December of the previous year.

Data are also published on the National Online Manpower Information System ( NOMIS) website ( www.nomisweb.co.uk)