Summary [July 1976]

Unless there is a major initiative in government economic policy, leading to a substantial and permanent increase in the level of productive investment in both the public and the private sectors, the outlook for the Scottish economy in 1977 and 1978 is a bleak one. In the absence of any such increases, then the most likely outcome of existing and forseeable trends is that the present mild recovery will fade away by the first half of 1977, and thus that unemployment will not fall below the 120 thousand level until sometime in 1978 or even 1979.