I am a reference for a couple of people and I am just not getting calls to check. They are actively job hunting and they say they are getting little to no response to their applications.
They are the kind of employees that should be jumped at.
The US unemployment rate is almost useless as it depends mainly on its denominator, the labor force. And that labor force number is entirely artificial, based on a mass of assumptions.
The best, consistent measure is the St. Louis Feds EMRATIO, in which the denominator is the US adult population, a hard number. And that shows no improvement in employment since Feb 2022.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO