The problem here is that it wouldn't necessarily be bleak. Housewives by choice, college kids and those just retired at 35 (or 65) are good things - these peop

The problem here is that it wouldn't necessarily be bleak. Housewives by choice, college kids and those just retired at 35 (or 65) are good things - these people are doing what they most want to do with their lives, and are having all their needs met without a job. However, as we haven't been collecting this data for the last hundred years we don't know what's normal for this number. And we don't know what percentage of the population are these "good unemployed" and what percentage of people are the traditional (bad) unemployed, so our guesses suck as well. I think this number should be released, but I don't think it will do much good for the first decade or 2. -- Addendum- after seeing maxericson's comment, I was reminded that I should not comment on things I don't know in depth. And it does seem like the U.S. does report the number of employed, it's just not what the press tracks. However, oddly, the numbers he links to seem to mainly be predicated on the same definition of unemployment, and do not seem to dive deeply into the category of "neither employed nor unemployed." Anyhow I'll leave my comment for the time being.