I keep hearing the economy is booming?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

65. That discussion/argument

about the real unemployment rate is constant and ongoing. This sentence: "unemployed whose benefits have expired and who no longer have an incentive to report that they are seeking employment," puzzles me in that I don't understand why someone whose unemployment benefits have expired would no longer report if they're seeking employment. Or does the department of labor simply not query those people and make assumptions that may or may not be accurate.

I also notice that "working age population" is defined as being from 15 to 64. An awful lot of people ages 15-18 are still in high school. And a reasonable number up through age 23 are still in school. A lot of them do work, but that definition seems to assume that everyone is in the work force starting at age 15.

I'm also being reminded of the blanket statement I see too often that no one over the age of 60 (or 50 or 40) can possible get a new job. I guess I'm the only person in North America to be hired after age 60. In fact, I got several different jobs in my sixties. And a couple of years ago I wound up turning down a job -- the owner of the company wanted to hire me on the spot -- because their definition of part time was 30 hours a week, and mine was 20. She did wind up hiring me on a temp basis a couple of times. And I was already 66/67 at the time.

Yes, I understand that it's really hard to get comparable work in many fields if you're let go after a certain age, and I get it that someone who used to run an IT department at a big company isn't going to be very willing to take most of the jobs I was willing to take. But there are still jobs out there.