Unemployment in Scotland has again fallen and remains close to a historic low, according to new figures.

Unemployment in Scotland has again fallen and remains close to a historic low, according to new figures.

The number of people unemployed has gone down on both methods of calculating the total.

Scottish Secretary Des Browne hailed "yet another impressive set of figures".

On the traditional method of calculation - the numbers of people on the jobseekers' allowance - the monthly unemployment total fell by 500 and by 13,700 over the year - to 74,300.

That unemployment rate of 2.7% remains close to the historical low, said officials.

On the other method of calculation, based on figures from the Labour Force Survey, unemployment in Scotland went down by 6,000 to 129,000 over the three months to July.

This was 7,000 lower than the same period last year and an unemployment rate of 4.8%, down 0.2% on the previous quarter and 0.4% over the year.

Meanwhile the number of people in employment reached 2.542 million, 12,000 higher than in the previous quarter and 83,000 higher than a year ago.

Mr Browne said these and other statistics consistently showed Scotland had not only a strong labour market but "a very healthy economy overall."

He said there was more to be done to attain full employment but went on: "This month's data underlines once again that the stability provided by the UK government's macroeconomic policy is working for Scotland's economy."