High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Friday, August 15, 2008
Employment Rate
The employment rate in Scotland has been steadily increasing since the mid 1990's with the rate in the latest available calendar quarter (Apr-Jun 2008) at 76.4%.
Comparing Scotland to the rest of the countries in the United Kingdom shows that Scotland currently has the highest employment rate out of the four countries. This has been true since 2005. Scotland has also shown the highest percentage point increase in employment rates out of the four countries since comparable records began (1995). The Scottish Government has set a target to maintain our position on labour market participation as the top performing country in the UK.
Source: Labour Force Survey, Seasonally Adjusted data, Office for National Statistics
The employment rate in Scotland using the European age definition (15-64) in 2007 was 72.4% which is 0.1 percentage points higher than the previous year. Compared to the other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Scotland has the 10th highest employment rate. The employment rate in Scotland is 3.3 percentage points lower than the country with the 5th highest rate (Sweden) which is 0.4 percentage points greater than the difference the previous year. The Scottish Government has set a target to close the gap with the top 5 OECD economies by 2017.
Source: OECD, Annual Population Survey
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