The unemployment rate that everyone uses (U.3) actually only counts people who have looked for work in the last 4 weeks since the BLS survey is taken. After tha

The unemployment rate that everyone uses (U.3) actually only counts people who have looked for work in the last 4 weeks since the BLS survey is taken. After that, they fall into (U.6), which is for people who have looked for work in the past year, and after that, they disappear from the stats all together. Because of this, counterintuitively, the official (U.3) employment rate can go up during a prolonged recession. This happened in 2008 - 2009 when people stopped looking for work. An estimate of the actual employment rate, including long term discouraged workers, is here: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart... If you don't trust that site, here is the Civilian labor force participation rate, which indicates the percentage of the working population is actually engaged in the labor force: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...