The chancellor could be forgiven for checking the jobs data and considering himself satisfied. Not much changed in the headline figures and that is what he would expect after putting the economy in the deep freeze.
Rishi Sunak paid almost everyone who could not work to stand still , and that was mostly what they did.
Hardly any of the 126,000 who left employment signed on as unemployed, leaving the unemployment rate at 3.9% for the three months to May, unchanged from the previous quarter.
The number of people in employment remained near record highs at 32.95 million, and the employment rate, at 76.4%, would be considered healthy by any government.
But that would ignore the 500,000 people the Office for National Statistics said had stopped working and not been furloughed. They would normally be represented in the employment figures and did not appear only because these are not normal times.
These workers have not applied for unemployment benefits. They are probably hanging on in the hope of something turning up.
Then there are the growing number of reports based on responses from the business community to the winding down of the furlough scheme.
Too many employers are saying they will be making redundancies during August, September and October, as subsidy cuts begin to bite, for the chancellor to relax.
Manufacturers have highlighted the growing threat of a no-deal Brexit as another reason for them to hold back production and consider redundancies.
These employers are mostly in the north-west and Midlands, where the government says it wants to increase jobs. They dominate the “red wall” seats won in December’s election and are top of the Treasury list of places to invest.
The problem is there may not be many employers left after the combined effects of coronavirus and Brexit have taken their toll.
A recent British Chambers of Commerce survey found almost a third of companies planned to make job cuts in the next three months.
Labour has demanded a continuation of the furlough scheme in a more targeted form. This would give the hardest-hit industries the bedrock of subsidy needed to carry on and protect employment.
The Resolution Foundation thinktank has called for the biggest job creation package in peacetime to prevent what it expects will become the worst unemployment crisis in Britain for a generation.
Sunak prefers to open up the economy in the hope this will generate the business and consumer confidence he needs.
Sadly, the haphazard way the government is allowing shops, leisure facilities and the hospitality industry to open their doors does not bode well.
Other countries have begun to experience second waves of the virus and are enforcing further lockdowns. Catalonia is poised to impose restrictions on Barcelona that could result in much of the tourism industry shutting again.
Sunak is not going far enough in maintaining employment subsidies where they are needed, and there is little consistency in the decisions of his cabinet colleagues.
Unless this changes quickly, the jobs crisis many fear will arrive in the autumn and leave the government with an even bigger bill.
