FOI reference: FOI-2025-3170
You asked
Could you supply how many Scots are currently off work or unemployed due to long-term sickness, (or use figures from your latest research), and how many were off work for the same reason at the end of each of the last five years?
We said
Thank you for your request regarding people on long-term sickness in Scotland.
We produce estimates for the labour market in Scotland, from the Annual Population Survey, based on interviews with people resident in households in the UK.
To be classified as unemployed, someone needs to be actively seeking work and available to start work. Therefore, someone unable to work due to long-term sickness would not meet the criteria for being unemployed, as they would not be available to start work.
We also do not have sufficient information about someone who is currently on sick leave from a job to be able to classify whether their sickness absence is due to a long-term sickness.
We do however produce statistics on the number of people who have not done paid work, or have a job that they are temporarily away from, and who are not currently seeking work. These people we call the economically inactive, or people not in the labour force.
For those not in the labour force, we produce statistics on the main reason why they were not seeking work, which are published for each of the countries and regions of the UK. These statistics include an estimate of the number where the main reason for not seeking work is long-term sickness or disability. These statistics are published on our Nomis website in a dataset annual population survey - regional - economic inactivity by reasons.
According to the APS, for the 12-month period January to December 2024, the number of people in Scotland, aged 16 to 64 years, not in the labour force for the main reason of being long-term sick or disabled was 276,400, or 34.6% of those not in the labour force. A time series for the last five years is in the attached analysis taken from the Nomis website.