Do any of the figures include those who ran out of employment a long, long time ago, cannot find another job, and are scrounging to eke out an existence?
The way it was before the Clinton years, The Department
of Labor would make monthly random nationwide telephone
calls, and you were considered to be unemployed if you
applied for unemployment, collecting unemployment,
working part time while looking for a full time employment.
Exhausted unemployment insurance, and looking for work, and if you stopped looking for work because of no jobs available, and discouraged for lack of finding a job.
If this model was still in use, the correct unemployment
figure would be between 17% to 22%.
Recently, a private polling company telephoned random,
and reported at lease 25% of the households reported
at lease one member of their family is out of work.