Scottish Social Services Workforce Data
Publications
Our workforce data, information and intelligence reports are all available from this section of the web-site. Below are quick links to our most recent publications.
More detailed information and tables regarding our workforce data can be found on our Detailed data page.
March 2025
The 2023 Staff vacancies in care services report
This Staff vacancies in care services 2023 report is jointly published by the Care Inspectorate and the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC). This report provides data on vacancies reported by care services as at 31 December 2023. It presents data on the number of registered care services with a vacancy, the number of actual vacancies that services say they had using whole time equivalent (WTE) data, and data on the reasons why services have reported that vacancies are hard to fill.
December 2024
2023 detailed workforce information
This spreadsheet contains information about the Social Services Workforce collected from services regulated by the Care Inspectorate (via its Annual Returns in December) and from the annual December Local Authority Social Work Services Staffing Return in 2023.
We created this spreadsheet to provide you with more detailed information about the workforce than is currently available in the Workforce Data Report. The spreadsheet will allow you to interrogate the data in detail at a local authority area level
November 2024
Analysis of diversity data and research report November 2024
Analysis of registrant equality data report November 2024
The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) today published Analysis of registrant equality data (PDF, 1.0MB)
This report combines data on fitness to practise, registration conditions and protected characteristics for the first time. This report also has data on religion and sexual orientation. The data is a snapshot as of January 2024.
Information on the differences between SSSC's registration data and the workforce data it receives and publishes can be found here: Differences between registration and workforce data
Download the report here: Download (PDF, 1.0MB)
Interactive Social Worker Data Tool 2023
The interactive Social Worker Data Tool allows you to interactively investigate data on practising social workers employed by local authorities. Guidance and background notes are included within the tool.
The latest version of the tool can be downloaded below
If you have any enquiries about these tables, please contact:
Zara Gall
Tel: 01382 723657
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Local Authority Post Types 2023
This file allows you to interactively investigate the Local Authority Post Types data. The file presents headcount and WTE (whole time equivalent) data of all filled posts in local authority social work services where those employed do not work in a registered care service. This therefore covers staff working primarily in field social work services. The data published includes a breakdown of the numbers of different people and posts across the whole of Scotland as well as by individual local authorities.
Social worker filled posts and vacancies six-monthly survey at June 2024
This report was reissued and republished on the 12th November 2024 after a revision which is detailed here
Analysis of data at 14th June 2024
This report presents data on the whole time equivalent (WTE) number of social workers and social work vacancies in local authority social work services in June 2024. It is the third of our half-yearly reports on practising social workers (that is, main grade social workers and senior social workers).
This third report presents data from all 32 local authorities. Key findings from the report are set out below:
