Regional Skills Assessments

RSAs provide the evidence we need to plan skills investment in Scotland's people and businesses.

What are Regional Skills Assessments (RSAs)?

The aim of Regional Skills Assessments (RSAs) is to provide a coherent evidence base to inform future investment in skills, built up from existing datasets.

RSAs are developed and used by SDS and its partners including: Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Government, the Scottish Local Authorities Economic Development Group and the South of Scotland Economic Partnership.

What's changed?

Last year, the RSAs were re-focussed in response to the Enterprise and Skills Review to support Skills Alignment. This includes a five-step planning model, the first step of which is a Skills Demand Assessment.

To continue to support this, the suite of RSA resources has maintained its focus on demand side evidence. They highlight economic and labour market data, offering trends, forecasts and insight for RSA regions, City Regions, Growth Deal areas and Local Authorities.

This year, the RSA materials will be released in two phases:

• Phase one: release of the new interactive RSA Data Matrix in August 2019
• Phase two: release of RSA Summary Reports and Infographics in October 2019

RSA Data Matrix

The new RSA Data Matrix is an interactive tool, offering data from a variety of sources in a visually engaging format. The data covers three themes:

• Skills Supply: the supply of people within the labour market
• Skills Demand: the demand for skills within the labour market
• Skills Mismatches: where there is a gap between the demand for skills and the supply of skills within the labour market.

The RSA Data Matrix is available below. If you are viewing this page on a mobile device, please click here to view the Data Matrix. 

Associated guidance for details on how to use the interactive tool:

• Guidance Document
• Video tutorial 

If you have any queries, comments, wish to provide any feedback or require this report in an alternative format, please contact rsa@sds.co.uk.

Key reports and infographics

The key reports and infographics are due to be updated in October 2019.

Download RSA information specific to your local authority from the Local Work section.

Alternatively, the RSA outputs are included below.