2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Factual talking points on the economy (UPDATED) [View all]progree
(10,901 posts)as unemployed
# Myth: "those who have exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits are not counted as unemployed. If they were counted, the official unemployment rate would be much higher" (you often hear this claim from the RepubliCONS when a Democratic president is in the White House, and vice versa).
# Fact: the count of the unemployed and the unemployment rate is not a count of those receiving unemployment benefits, nor is unemployment benefit receiver status factored at all into any of the official unemployment rate statistics (U3, U4, U5, U6, etc.). Rather, the unemployment rate is based on a survey of 60,000 households chosen at random. See: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm or Google: "Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey"