A WARNING that thousands of Scots are being forced into insecure and poor-quality jobs has overshadowed encouraging figures showing a fall in unemployment.

The country's headline jobless total fell below 200,000 for the first time since 2009, according to official statistics.

They also showed the number of Scots in work from December to February rose by 39,000 to 2,507,000, the biggest quarterly jump for more than a decade.

However, trade unions warned the figures masked damaging changes to the jobs market.

Grahame Smith, general secretary of the STUC, said: "Today's labour market statistics for Scotland are the most positive for some months with the fall in unemployment supplemented by a rise in employment that is on the face of it very impressive.

"However, a couple of caveats must be applied: again it was almost exclusively men who benefited from the fall in unemployment as women continue to struggle badly in the current labour market.

"The latest statistics also suggest the quality of jobs being created remains poor: employee and full-time employment continues to fall as temporary and self-employment rises. Very long-term unemployment also increased again across all age groups."

The warning came a day after MSPs published a hard-hitting report on underemployment – when people work fewer hours than they want or are forced to take a job for which they are overqualified.

Holyrood's Economy Committee voiced fears that insecure, temporary and part-time work could become a permanent feature of the jobs market.

Yesterday's figures from the Office for National Statistics showed an 11,000 drop in unemployment from December to February, taking the total to 197,000. At the same time unemployment across the UK increased by 70,000 to 2.56 million.

The Scottish jobless rate is now 7.3%, compared to 7.9% for the UK as a whole.

There was also a fall of 600, from February to March, in the number of people out of work and claiming Jobseeker's Allowance, taking the total to 136,600. However, the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance for two years or more rose to 17,300, more than double the total last year.

Separate figures showed the Scottish economy grew by 0.5% in the final quarter of last year, a period in which there was a 0.3% contraction across the UK.

The news was welcomed by Finance Secretary John Swinney. He said: "We can build on these figures for the future but we can't allow the UK Government's economic policies to derail the positive developments we are seeing in Scotland."

Scottish Secretary Michael Moore said the figures showed a positive outlook for job prospects. However, an analysis of the latest employment and growth figures by the CPPR think-tank, based at Glasgow University, showed Scotland's economic recovery continued to lag behind the UK. It said Scotland's employment growth over the past year was sluggish by comparison to the UK while the economy had grown by just 3.3%, compared to 4.7% across the UK since 2008/09.

Shadow Finance Secretary Ken Macintosh said: "Any signs of improvement in the jobs market in Scotland are to be welcomed but there is so much more this Government could and should be doing."

Political Editor