Union leaders demanded action from ministers as they said 38,000 Scots were facing their second Christmas on the dole.
The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) said the number of people out of work for a year or more had more had risen by 50% from last December and the number of young people unemployed for more than 12 months had quadrupled since May 2010.
STUC general secretary Grahame Smith said: "With nearly 40,000 people facing a second Christmas on the dole – over 8000 of them young people – it is time for meaningful action by Government to deal with the crisis of worklessness.
"Since last Christmas, 50% more Scots find themselves in the position of having been out of work for 12 months or more. This is miserable for them and disastrous for the long-term health of the economy."
Mr Smith added: "We desperately need a new approach and a reversal of the decision to cut resources for employment support."
Official figures earlier this month revealed that Scotland has had its biggest quarterly fall in unemployment for more than four years. Between August and October the number of people classed as unemployed fell 19,000 to 204,000.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "The unemployment rate in Scotland is once again lower than that of the UK as a whole and is the lowest of all UK nations, but more still needs to be done, particularly in light of the fall in employment.
"The Scottish Government is doing all it can to expand our economy by channelling funding into infrastructure projects."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article