Although a government statement on the labour market statistics for Scotland doesn’t on the surface sound like the juiciest news release of the day, today’s has proved rather revealing. With unemployment in Scotland down by 15,000 in the period December 2016 to February 2017, the Scottish unemployment rate has fallen to 4.5 per cent — below the rate of 4.7 per cent for the whole of the UK.
You might expect the Scotland Office press release to trumpet this good news but instead it turns its guns on the SNP — pointing to the fact that the Scots employment rate decreased by 0.1 percentage points over the quarter to 73.4 per cent. The rate is below the UK average of 74.6 per cent.
Commenting on the news, David Mundell, the Secretary of State for Scotland, has issued an unusually politically charged statement — describing the falling employment numbers and rising inactivity statistics as ‘a real cause for concern’.
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