Talking-up Scotland

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It’s all a matter of how you say it. Today, the Daily Business Group had: ‘Scots jobless tally falls to same rate as UK’ while the BBC had: ‘Scottish unemployment falls by 16,000.’ The English and Scottish unemployment rates are now the same at 4.7%. However, comparing a country of 5 million people with another of more than 50 million is meaningless. Far more meaningful would be to compare the parts with each other as the BBC did back in January 2016

From the BBC website, the jobless rate for the three months to November 2016:

South East       3.4%

Wales              4.4%

Scotland          5.1%

N Ireland         5.6%

London            5.6%

North East       6.8%

Presented that way, Scotland didn’t really seem to have a problem compared with England even then. Now that we are at the same level overall, perhaps the regional comparisons will be even better? I can’t find them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38661443

On youth unemployment, the Scottish Government are bit more assertive, as they should be:

‘Record youth unemployment rates continue.’ 

‘While we still have much to do, our work to develop opportunities for young people through apprenticeships and training and to close the gender pay gap is helping us set ourselves apart from the rest of the UK. In terms of youth unemployment rates, we are second only to Germany within the EU. These latest figures show Scotland’s labour market remains resilient with unemployment rates and levels falling, and our female and youth employment rates outperforming the UK overall.’

http://news.gov.scot/news/unemployment-levels-fall

https://dailybusinessgroup.co.uk/2017/03/scots-unemployment-matches-uk-average/

Good news.