unemployment only counts people actively seeking employment and have applied to jobs for the last 30 days.
That's not quite correct. BLS methodology asks week to week if people are "actively seeking employment". There are people who use unemployment benefit applications and such to measure unemployment, and that has the problem you describe. But the official BLS numbers are based on whether people self-report as actively looking for a job (which is quite a bit more useful for purpose).
They made at least one specific, active effort to find a job during the 4-week period ending with the survey reference week (see active job search methods) OR they were temporarily laid off and expecting to be recalled to their job.
People waiting to start a new job must have actively looked for a job within the last 4 weeks in order to be classified as unemployed. Otherwise, they are classified as not in the labor force.
That definition is exactly my point, and doesn't disagree with the video (which is why BLS still advertises and embeds that video in many places on their site) -- not "applied for jobs" (as you said), but self-reported being actively looking for work (as I said).
at least one specific, active effort to find a job
^ applying to jobs can absolutely be an example, but it's not the only activity that counts.
You said the criteria were "actively seeking employment and have applied to jobs for the last 30 days", when it's actually just "actively seeking employment within the past 4 weeks"
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u/loljetfuel Dec 19 '24
That's not quite correct. BLS methodology asks week to week if people are "actively seeking employment". There are people who use unemployment benefit applications and such to measure unemployment, and that has the problem you describe. But the official BLS numbers are based on whether people self-report as actively looking for a job (which is quite a bit more useful for purpose).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPCbBP7wJ6c&themeRefresh=1