It’s amazing how the true story of an economy seldom gets through to really smart people. Of course, some true stories are hard to see but others are much easier to grasp, but either the media does a crappy job revealing it, because it’s preoccupied with the negative, or the people in it are just plain plonkers.

To be fair, some true stories on the economy are hard to know, such as how will global economies cope with the mountain of debt that existed before the Coronavirus, which has been put on a steroids programme because of the worldwide need for a gargantuan economic rescue programme to beat COVID-19’s closures and lockdowns?

But other economic stories, such as how our economy is going (judging from the latest job numbers) are a fair bit easier and I’m not sure if the Prime Minister is getting it right channelling Winston Churchill.

I know it’s dangerous linking your brand to old Winston nowadays. Along with ‘terrible types’ like Captain Cook, he’s seeing his memorial statue defaced and terrorized. But I guess they can’t stop us remembering some of his smart political observations.

And I suspect the PM is using Winston’s “Never waste a good crisis…” advice by firstly not pointing out some positive aspects of Thursday’s job numbers and secondly, by putting pressure on the unions to keep playing ball in rescuing jobs, business owners’ futures and the economy generally.

As the AFR tells us: “The Morrison government wants emergency industrial relations measures extended beyond September and further flexibility from unions to prevent the jobless rate rising, after it hit a 19-year high due to the coronavirus shutdown.”

Of course, the unions’ computers are all saying: “No!” And ScoMo will put the pressure on them to get them to change their spots for at least a short time, which offers him two possible scenarios.

First, the unions say yes and effectively speed up the recovery, which will be a nice dividend for the Government at the expense of the unions’ buddies in the Labor Party. Or second, the unions say no and Labor will support them, which will be slightly bad for the economy but good for the Government and bad for Albo and his team.

As I suggested, the PM isn’t wasting a good crisis but thankfully on the more important matter — our economy and our hip pocket futures, those job numbers weren’t all bad.

Sure, the rise in unemployment from 6.2% in April to 7.1% in May is terrible and so is 927,600 out of work. But the Yanks have a jobless rate of 13.3%.

And seeing 227,000 people lose their jobs isn’t great but it’s really down on April’s 607,400 increase. Also, because we are living in crazy times with forced closures, vacated CBDs, most of the economy working from home, some state borders closed, JobKeeper giving casuals who once were on $300 a week are now on $750 a week and so on, you can’t easily trust statistics and economists’ forecasts.

Things are so mad, bad and dangerous for economists making predictions, it’s hard to be confident about anything economic right now.

The number that smart economists told us to look out for was the little looked at figure of “hours worked”. In April, this fell by a record 9.2%. But in May, it only slipped 0.7%. That’s improvement and you have to remember that we only got to watch NRL footie live on May 28 and the AFL was still hibernating by that date.

The merry month of May got merrier, albeit slowly, as reopening of the economy progressed slowly.

Our Sydney office is opposite Australia Square in the CBD and until a couple of weeks ago it was a ghost town. But that’s changed over the past two weeks and normalcy is starting to sneak back. This should show up in the June jobs report and the PM, the unions and Labor know this. And provided there’s no scary second-wave infections to threaten lives and the improving life signs of the economy, then it’s not only “game on” for footie in June but it’s “game on” for the blood sport called politics!

As the AFR’s Matthew Cranston and Phillip Coorey pointed out about the PM: “While hinting the numbers may be a little better than reported because the data was collected before the states began opening their economies, he said there was still a tough road ahead and it would be two years before the economy was back to where it was before the pandemic struck.”

There certainly is a tough road ahead back to pre-COVID-19 Australia but we’re heading in the right direction and ScoMo knows if the unions play ball, the economy and his political popularity will also head in the best direction. The only losers would be Albo and Labor.

As Ronald Reagan once said: “It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.”