It would seem to anyone briefly touching on the topic of unemployment, that the very definition of unemployment is simple: anyone looking for work but not finding it. Right?

Not so fast. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has many methods for computing unemployment, only one of which is presented as the official unemployment rate.

Further, independent third parties provide their own computations for unemployment rates as they would be performed in other countries, or using methodology BLS applied in the past, but has since changed.

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Bureau of Labor Statistics, U-3, U-6, Unemployment Hide