Clyde-built recovery
Where are the 5,000 missing businesses that should be in Glasgow?
That's the figure reached by a new economic analysis, underlining the low level of entrepreneurial activity in Scotland's biggest city.
The low level of business start-ups runs in parallel with problems with basic skills, particularly numeracy and literacy across much of its population (while it also has a high graduate rate) and what are called "entrenched levels of worklessness".
Reed in Partnership, a private company that contracts with the public sector for training and recruitment, has run a rule over the city, and concluded that closing that start-up gap should be a high priority for the next five to ten years.
The positive news is that Glasgow's hotel business has done well through the recession, with good occupancy rates and room rates holding up. It's also got the Commonwealth Games on its side.
And a small survey found that 43% of the city's businesses reckon it's holding up pretty well compared with the rest of the UK, while 17% think it's being relatively hard hit.
Another analysis of the city economy, carried out by Slims Consulting, highlights Glasgow's strength in financial and business services, representing 27% of employment and 33% of output.
That makes it vulnerable to the problems those sectors have seen through the recession. But on the other hand, the city's financial strength is in insurance, taking on more esure jobs, as well as 1300 Tesco Bank roles.
Glasgow's manufacturing heritage has now been reduced to only 6% of employment and 10% of output.
And how has it fared in unemployment?
Measured by claimants of Jobseekers Allowance (so leaving aside Glasgow's high levels of incapacity benefit), Glasgow has seen numbers rise by 51% between August last year and this, leaving it only slightly worse off than the average of English core cities, with a lower dole count than Birmingham or Liverpool, and slightly more than Nottingham.
The ratio of claimants to job vacancies does not look good, relative to English cities.
But there's an economists' cautious welcome for Glasgow emerging out of this recession in a comparatively strong position to build on its strengths.

Hullo, I'm Douglas Fraser, and I'm business and economy editor at BBC Scotland. Welcome to my blog, where you can read my take on money matters, viewed from a Scottish perspective.

~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~50~RS~)