The unemployment rate should be around 12% (or higher if you count the under-employed) but the government has done a wonderful thing, they no longer count people dropping off the unemployment roles after they have exceeded the 99 weeks of unemployment insurance. They are literally ignoring millions of people in order to get the rate down to 8.8%. It will be an interesting election, the government can say whatever they want about the unemployment rate but the true rate will kill them at the polls.
They haven’t counted those that fall of the rolls for years and years. That’s nothing new.