One reason could be that the current unemployment rate used is not that useful. A better metric would be total employment: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-

One reason could be that the current unemployment rate used is not that useful. A better metric would be total employment: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons It has increased since the pandemic, but so did the US population. If the linear trend (pre-pandemic) carried on, the US should be at 165 million total employed. However, currently it is sitting at 161 million. So there is 3-4 million jobs missing.