Regional review [June 1999]

From 1992 to 1996 there was a general marked narrowing of regional unemployment differentials. During this period unemployment in the southern regions rose much more rapidly than in the peripheral regions. Whilst national unemployment was rising, unemployment differentials were narrowing. Scotland was in the situation where its
unemployment rate was below or just marginally above the UK average. This contrasts with the situation in the late 1980s where Scottish unemployment was almost 60% above the UK average. However, developments in the UK economy over the past three years have been associated with a re-emergence of the more familiar polarised pattern of regional development The narrowing of regional unemployment rates in the early 1990s appears to be a temporary phenomenon associated with the spatial incidence of the recession in the late 1980s.