The Scottish Government's quarterly survey of its workforce - Scottish Government workforce information - has just been released and shows progress across most measures of diversity, even as the numbers of civil servants reporting their diversity information falls.

This Official Statistics publication has presented data on the Scottish Government's workforce for each quarter since 2012.

The statistics show that the permanent workforce has increased by 11% to 7968, and the contingent (not directly employed) workforce has increased by 24.7% to 1965.

The Scottish Government still lags when it comes to ethnic diversity among full time employed staff, with representation remaining static at 2.6%. Ethnic minorities make up 4% of Scotland's population.

The comparable figures in the UK Civil Service are 13.2% of staff coming from ethnic minority backgrounds, against 14% in the general population.

Well over half (55.5%) of the Scottish Government's workforce are female, which is higher than the same period last year (54% September 2020). This compares with 53.8% of the UK Civil Service being female (as of September 2020).

The proportion of LGBTQ+ staff has more than doubled since 2016 to 5.3%, which compares with 5.1% (as of 2020) across the UK Civil Service as a whole. In 2020 LGBTQ+ identifying staff made up 4.65% of the Scottish Government's permanent staff.