Forecasts of the Scottish economy [March 2014]

This section provides an overview of recent changes in the drivers of economic activity in Scotland and provides the detailed forecasts for the Scottish economy to 2015 on key economic variables of GDP, employment and unemployment. In line with improving economic data and surveys of activity at the start of 2014, we are cautiously encouraged by the short term outlook for growth to 2015. As previously, we caution about the unbalanced nature of economic growth based upon consumption spending growth –
when income growth is weak and part of the consumption growth comes as households reduce their savings rather than paying down debt levels. This has implications for the “balance”, robustness and speed of recovery in the Scottish economy.