This indicator measures the proportion of employees (aged 16 and above) who have a permanent contract. Find out more about this indicator.

The proportion of employees who were in  contractually secure work in Scotland decreased from  95.0 per cent in 2019 to 94.6 per cent in 2020. In 2020, the proportion of employees in Scotland who were in contractually secure work was 94.6 per cent, a decrease of 0.4 percentage points since 2019.

In 2020:

• Those who are aged between 16 and 24 or 65 and over are least likely to be in contractually secure work. In the 16-24 age group the proportion is 88.2 per cent and in the 65 and above age group the proportion is 89.9 per cent.
• There was little difference between the proportions of men and women in contractually secure work. In 2020, however, the proportion for women (94.9 per cent) is 0.6 percentage points higher than the proportion for men (94.3 per cent) for the first time since the series began in 2007.
• The proportion of employees in contractually secure work who are not disabled (94.9 per cent) is higher than for those who are disabled (93.4 per cent), a gap of 1.5 percentage points.
• Proportions of employees in contractually secure work is above 90 per cent across all SIMD quintiles. In 2020, the quintiles with the lowest proportions were 4 (93.8 per cent) and 5 (92.4 per cent) with these proportions having fallen by 1.1 percentage points and 2.3 percentage points respectively since 2019.
• A higher proportion of ‘White’ employees are in contractually secure work compared with ‘Minority ethnic’ employees  (94.9 per cent v 87.8 per cent). The proportion of minority ethnic employees in contractually secure work has fallen by 4.3 percentage points since 2019 compared with a fall of 0.2 percentage points for white employees.
• The proportions of employees in contractually secure work were similar across the ‘No religion’, ‘Christian’ and ‘Other religion’ groups. However, over the year the proportion in ‘Other religion’ fell by 6.5 percentage points and this group is around 7.2 percentage points lower than the other two groups (both 94.9 per cent).