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On a July day that has been unseasonably adjusted by heavy rain, the latest job figures tell a tale that's becoming familiar.

The claimant count is down slightly on last month. The three-month rolling survey of people looking for work registered a slight increase to 216,000.

We can feel relieved it's not far worse, and many thought it would be. We can hold our breath while the public sector across Britain threatens to push hundreds of thousands more out of work.

We can worry at the fact that, across Britain, the number of people aged 18 to 24 who have been unemployed for more than 12 months has risen over the past year by 40%. Between March and May, the labour market survey registered 188,000 such people.

Or we can ask - why is it that Scotland's relatively strong employment position has become relatively weak, and what needs to be done about it?

Employer pessimism

Scotland went into the recession with a higher proportion of people in employment than England, and a lower proportion of people unemployed.

Both positions have been reversed. Scotland has had five consecutive months of modest declines in those on Jobseekers Allowance. But it's also had three months of being in a worse position than its neighbour and closest economic parallel.

In England, the number of people who are unemployed is up 26,000 over the past year - in Scotland, it's up by 35,000.

In England, the number in employment is up 37,000 in the past year - in Scotland, it's down 65,000.

In England, the number of economically active has risen 63,000 since March-May 2009 - in Scotland, it's down 30,000.

The proportion of economically inactive people in England has gone up by less than half the rate in Scotland.

Why? The figures don't tell us. But we could guess at some possible reasons; that Scottish employers are doing less to hold on to their staff, for instance. It may be that they're less optimistic about hiring. It could be that Scots are less flexible about taking part-time or temporary work. It could be explained by the methodology - this is a big survey sample, but by the time you drill down to the Scottish level, it becomes harder to draw reliable conclusions.

What should be done about it? That depends on your assessment of what's going wrong to explain this relatively poor performance. But it's a challenge to those seeking election to Holyrood next May. They may not have much cash to splash around, but they'll need a robust response on jobs.

Healthy health jobs

There are other nuggets of information that can be mined from these statistics. Across Britain, the number of people who are working part time has gone up 265,000 since the same period last year. Of them, 133,000 say they are part-time because they couldn't find full time work. Over that period, the number of full-time jobs in the economy has fallen by 143,000.

The number of people classified as economically inactive has risen by 172,000 in a year. In that category, 117,000 would like a job, but they're not counted as having looked for a job in the previous four weeks or as being ready to start one in the next two weeks.

You might wish to note that the number of people employed in manufacturing has fallen by 371,000 between March 2008 and March this year. Over the same period, Britain has lost 269,000 construction jobs, and 184,000 in finance. Meanwhile employment in education has risen 114,000 and health and social work by 272,000.

That tells you a lot about what's happening across the British workforce, and reflects the fiscal boost to make up for the fall in private sector demand.

And as we know well, that re-balancing of the economy is going to tell a different story over the next four or five years.