customer service
Scottish Government
Job Start Payment is a new benefit that helps young people in Scotland, who are receiving certain benefits, with the costs of starting a new job. It is open to young people aged 16 to 24 who reside in Scotland. The upper age is extended to 25 if the young person is a care leaver. The payment is a one-off cash sum of either £319.80 for those who do not have responsibility for a child or a higher amount of £511.65 for those who do. Social Security Scotland began taking applications for Job Start Payment on 17 August 2020. This dataset includes the number of applications received and authorised for the Job Start Payment benefit as well as the total value of payments made. Statistics are provided for the last day of the month (e.g. figures for 2020-08 are for applications received or authorised as of 31 August 2020)
Rounding and disclosure control Application and outcome figures have been rounded to the nearest five for disclosure control. Data has been suppressed where it would disclose fewer than five applications. Missing and duplicate applications The data comes from 100% data cut of the case management system. The data cut was checked for applications where the fields relating to application date and the outcome and payment of the application were blank. These applications would represent temporary 'prospect cases', which are created when clients contact Social Security Scotland without a National Insurance number, and are later replaced once a National Insurance number is received from the applicant. Any such applications are therefore duplicates and would are excluded from the statistics. Clients may make repeated applications to Job Start Payment in certain circumstances. For instance, if their initial application is withdrawn or denied. This means that there can be several applications from the same client in the data cut. For these statistics we have retained all of these applications. Geography Applications are assigned to local authority area by postcode using a Scottish Statistics Postcode Lookup - National Records of Scotland (NRS) file. For some applications, the postcode will not match to the lookup file. This can be because the postcode is not in a Scottish local authority area, or because the postcode has been introduced too recently to appear on the lookup file, for example if a property is in a new development. For postcodes that could not be matched to a Scottish local authority area, the postcode area was used to check whether the postcode was in Scotland or elsewhere. Following these checks on postcodes, in this publication a small number of applications and payments could not be matched to a local authority area. Figures for the applications and payments that did not match to Scottish local authority areas are provided in the [official statistics publication tables](https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/publications/2026/06/job-start-payment-statistics-to-31-march-2026) Authorisation and Payment In this dataset, the date that applications were processed by client advisors is the date used to produce statistics of processed applications. After applications are authorised for payment by client advisors, the decision is approved by a manager, and then a payment is issued. In some cases, payments will be issued on the same day that payments are authorised by client advisors, however in other cases there can be a delay before payments are issued. Clients should receive money in their nominated account within four working days after payment is issued. In this dataset, we report on the value of payments that have been issued by the end of each month and not the payments successfully received by the applicants. Due to Job Start Payment launching on the 17 August 2020, a very small number of payments were made in August. Payment values for August and September 2020 have been aggregated and are presented under September 2020 within this dataset. A very small number of payments are made manually to clients. These manual payments do not appear in the administrative data extracts used for this dataset and are therefore not counted in the payment statistics.
Job Start Payment is a new benefit that helps young people in Scotland, aged 16 to 24, who are receiving certain benefits, with the costs of starting a new job.
Further information on applications, processing times, and payments can be found in the associated [publication](https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/publications/2026/06/job-start-payment-statistics-to-31-march-2026).
Figures have been rounded to the nearest five for disclosure control. Some values are missing from this dataset. These values have been suppressed where they would disclose small cohorts.
There is currently not a UK equivalent to Job Start Payment, therefore there are no comparable statistics.
S92
uk-ogl
The data used to produce these statistics are extracted from the Social Security case management system. Extracts from this system are also used on a daily basis for internal reporting within Social Security Scotland. As such, the data is checked daily for consistency with previous extracts (i.e. do applications, decisions and payments figures increase as expected over time, and are they in proportion to each other) and compared to other sources of information such as the number of payment instructions reported by the finance team. Quality assurance and cleaning has been carried out on the variables used in the official statistics: * Checking for duplicate and missing application references * Checking application dates, processing times and payment times are within the expected ranges * Checking that payment date is present where a payment value is present * Removal of a small number of test applications which were used to test the case management system. * Checking postcodes that do not match to local authorities Once the data is aggregated and copied into the publication and supporting Excel tables, the final statistics are quality assured by a different member of the statistics team. The final documents are checked by the lead statistician.
These statistics are updated every 6 months. These updates coincide with our bi-annual publications on Job Start Grant. The publication can be found on the [Social Security Scotland website](https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/publications/2026/06/job-start-payment-statistics-to-31-march-2026) Data are collected, validated, and published in as timely a manner as possible in accordance with the Statistics Code of Practice. Data are published bi-annually and can be found on the [Scottish Government website](https://www.gov.scot/publications/producing-official-statistics/pages/revisions-and-corrections/).
Not assessed
annual
Job Start Payment was introduced through secondary legislation, using the powers to top up a reserved benefit contained in section 79 of the Social Security Scotland Act 2018. An Order under section 63 of the Scotland Act 1998 gave the Scottish Government further powers to arrange assistance under section 2 of the Employment and Training Act 1973. Social Security Scotland is the executive agency of Scottish Government that is responsible for delivering the social security benefits for Scotland. The agency began taking applications for Job Start Payment on Monday 17 August 2020.
CKAN
Economic Activity, Benefits and Tax Credits
Job Start Payment: Applications and Payments
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Data file for Job Start Payment: Applications and Payments
GeographyCode
text
Units
Job Start Payment Indicator
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GeographyType
Measurement
Value
int
CSV