Duh.

If you fall out of the labor force and collect unemployment for a while, after a certain period, I'm not sure how much, they simply scratch you from the list.

So those who were collecting unemployment in 2008, those many people who lost their jobs then, unless they found new ones, would not be counted.  They fall off the register and it looks as if things are getting better, even though we haven't gained any more jobs.  Unemployment has been getting steadily worse since 2008, that's what they're not saying.

Then there are the many, many people who are underemployed, who are counted in most of the main polls as being employed, which is absurd.  For instance, when Obama started a census, and there were many temporary workers hired ( getting paid peanuts ) this was supposedly a great step towards "recovery," the numbers jumped up.

Then there are those who don't collect unemployment but who are nevertheless unemployed, living off whatever they have.  They probably don't register on any radar.  No one knows that I'm unemployed, for instance, because I don't collect any money for it.  

I'm sure there are many, many people who are readjusting their lives, moving in with parents, scaling down their lifestyles, doing what it takes to survive with whatever savings they have, but who don't collect unemployment.  

There are also those who the banks allow to live in their homes even though they can't pay for it.  There are so many houses that should be in foreclosure that, if the banks released these homes on the market, it would glut the market and completely crash the system.  Because of this, sometimes you will see people with modest incomes, savers who played it smart, who are lurking around waiting for house prices to fall, knowing that we're still in a bubble and that a realistic price for a million-dollar house would probably be more like $100,000.  You will often see them asking "Is it time to buy or should I wait until prices fall further?"  

What they don't realize is that the banks cannot afford to allow the prices to adjust, they can't afford for homes to become what they're really worth.  That would crash everything.  That is why the banks keep home prices artificially high, even though more people are unemployed and the salaries of those who are employed are not rising to meet the costs of gas, food, etc.  Therefore, fewer and fewer people every day are able to afford homes.  

The result of this madness that we have gotten ourselves into is this:  You have a few good areas and the rest of the country is turning into a ghetto.  There was a movie I saw before I was Catholic, Land of the Dead, a zombie film, where everyone was poor except for a handful of elite who lived in a huge exclusive skyscraper.  Everything outside of this last bastion of luxury is surrounded by a wasteland.  That is pretty much exactly what's going on.

The Inland Empire near Los Angeles is a classic example, it went from boom to bust in ten years.  Earlier in the century it was thriving, basically it was relatively cheap land where Mexicans could buy homes.  But they took out loans they couldn't afford and got foreclosed on.  Now it looks like a nuclear bomb hit it.  L.A. was expanding, expanding, expanding, out into the desert, reaching out further and further, and then BOOM!!!  It hit a huge brick wall.  Now the boomerang is coming back and chopping off heads in the process.

The moral of the story is, ignore the pundits, ignore the press, the Western world is in steady decline and it is going to collapse, sooner or later.