The BLS government definition ends unemployment status at one year. There's a classic Micheal Moore movie (or, someone else?) where he discussed the closure of

The BLS government definition ends unemployment status at one year. There's a classic Micheal Moore movie (or, someone else?) where he discussed the closure of the Janesville Wisconsin General Motors assembly plant which historically employed between 10% and 1% of the city. In December 2008 when it closed the number of unemployed increased by 1200 people. In December of 2009 the number of unemployed auto workers legally officially dropped to zero. Obviously all 1200 people didn't get jobs... Thats where SSDI comes into play, because unemployment is a state funded program but SSDI is federally funded. SSDI has been roughly doubling in size every 5 years since the 80s, very roughly. Currently there's about 14 million under 65 getting federal disability benefits. Its increased from about 2 percent to about 4 percent of the population this century, and shows no indication of leveling off or decreasing, LOL. So the current unemployement rate of 4.7% is realistically about 8.7%