When a government minister spies “glimmers of hope” after the biggest annual fall in employment since the financial crisis, the safest response is usually to treat the comments with a pinch of salt.

Yet a dive into the UK’s latest labour market figures shows the verdict of employment minister Mims Davies cannot be dismissed simply as Panglossian spin.

When the Office for Budget Responsibility published its first grim scenarios in April last year, it forecast unemployment peaking at 10pc in 2020. That the official jobless rate is at barely half that - at 5.1pc - is due mainly to the largesse of Rishi Sunak and the adaptability of businesses, which is said to have helped soften the Chancellor’s more hawkish stance on reopening.

Of course, when the Office for National Statistics estimates that some 6.4m workers are in the furlough scheme, talking up the UK’s labour market is a dangerous game. Rising long-term and youth unemployment are also significant reasons for worry. But most economists and market watchers agree with Davies on some reasons for cheer.

The first is the ONS’s experimental payroll figures, which show an extra 83,000 employees added to PAYE data in January. The ONS points out that these are early estimates, and stresses that payrolls are still 730,000 lower than a year ago. But it does represent a second month running of growth, and at least the graph is heading in the right direction. Considering that the UK was entering its third national lockdown at the time, it is no mean feat.

Sam Miley, an economist with CEBR, says: “These figures suggest that businesses are becoming slightly more accustomed to operating under restriction measures and are thus requiring a greater degree of labour inputs.”

Other glimmers can also be seen in a 20,000 fall in the monthly claimant count from admittedly elevated levels to 2.6m.

The latest redundancy data paints a similar picture, with those at risk tailing off slightly from record highs to 12.3 people per 1,000 workers, and numbers declining steadily since last autumn.

Whereas Covid-19 has been catastrophic for self-employed workers, the number of full-time employees are at a record high. Temporary workers are also at their highest level for three years, in a sign of firms potentially hedging their bets. The number of vacancies, meanwhile, rose by 64,000 in the quarter to January.

The ONS data has some echoes of the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development’s latest labour monitor, which showed hiring intentions at their highest for a year. Some 56pc of employers in the 2,000-strong survey are looking to add to numbers. The body’s senior policy adviser, Gerwyn Davies, called the ONS figures “very good for an economy passing through a fragile and uncertain period”.

Sunak is also likely to give more succour to the jobs market next week in the Budget as the economy reopens with an extension of furlough, according to Peel Hunt economist Ian Williams, who also sees “causes for optimism” in the ONS data. “If the proposed reopening timetable encourages businesses to retain furloughed workers, the outlook for employment may be less bleak than many feared,” he says.

Businesses can “see the finish line” according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s chief executive Neil Carberry, who reads optimistic signals from his 3,000 members.

He says: “There are hiring plans in place in companies that suggest that if we have a reasonable run over the next few months, that we will have quite a good job creation year.

“For me, the big challenge in the British labour market for mid to late 2021, isn’t actually ‘are there enough jobs?’ It's ‘can we get the people we have to the jobs that there are?’. It's a transition challenge, because the pace of economic change is so high.”

Until then, though, the onus is on the Chancellor to nurture the labour market’s delicate green shoots and stem a second wave of unemployment even as the vaccine conquers Covid-19.