One argument I've seen is that although BLS provides many metrics, they consciously avoid several useful metrics that paint a realistic but negative picture of

One argument I've seen is that although BLS provides many metrics, they consciously avoid several useful metrics that paint a realistic but negative picture of the economy. If I understand it, one big complaint is that "long term discouraged workers" are dropped from U6, and BLS does not publish a metric showing total labor force participation. I don't know enough about the details to assess know if this is true, but I thought this piece seemed like an objective criticism: http://www.shadowstats.com/article/c810x.pdf http://www.shadowstats.com/article/c810x.pdf