Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work, Keith Brown, said: “These encouraging figures continue to show that the fundamentals of the Scottish economy are strong, with a 51,000 rise in the employment level and a drop of just over one percentage point in the unemployment rate over the quarter, taking it below that of the United Kingdom average”.
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Retail sales volumes were down 0.2 per cent on July, which had seen a jump of 1.9 per cent in the strongest performance for the month in 14 years.
Despite the apparent resilience in the labor market, many economists have expressed caution over the outlook.
“As predicted in our recent economic forecast, weaker employment alongside expected increases in inflation could trigger a broader economic slowdown by squeezing household spending – a major driver of United Kingdom economic growth”.
“However, while one must not give undue weighting to a single month’s figures, the rise in the claimant count suggests the labour market could begin to soften in the coming months if this trend continues”.
It said the economic news since the June 23 Brexit vote was “consistent” with its August judgment that “business spending would slow more sharply than consumer spending in response to the uncertainty associated with the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union”.
Mr Brown added: “The statistics continue to show that Scotland is outperforming the rest of the United Kingdom in terms of youth employment and I am very pleased that the female employment rate has risen over the quarter, a testament to our work to ensure women have the same equality of opportunities in the labour market as their male counterparts”.
The rise in people in work “remains supported by surging self-employment”, Mr Tombs said.
There are 2.7 million more people in a job than in 2010, despite public sector employment tumbling by a million since the Tories came to power six years ago.
The figures showed a drop in the jobless number to 1.63 million though they also revealed that wage growth slowed. However, the number of job openings also increased.
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The proportion of people in work hit a record high of 74.5%. Combined with a widely-anticipated upsurge in inflation, rising unemployment would likely have an adverse impact on consumer spending, a key driver of the British economy, hurting its growth prospects.
