> I wonder if they separate those who wish to/need to work from those who don't. For those who have given up searching, that is.

Indeed they do. The rate you most commonly see tries to measure unemployment in the active labor force. If you're not actively looking for work, you're not counted as unemployed. There are other measures which do count "discouraged workers" and others not usually included. They're much higher.

Yea, I was talking about further filtering "discouraged workers", or those who've given up searching for work. I think it'd be interesting to apply the "wish to/need to" filter to those who are employed, too!

This article[1] gets into a bit, but

"Some men choose not to work and can afford not to. That’s great, Furman says. But for many, probably most, dropping out of the work force not only means a lack of income but also a loss of the dignity that comes with not working."

still sounds like conjecture, to me.

[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men-not-a...

>Discouraged workers are a subset of persons marginally attached to the labor force. The marginally attached are those persons not in the labor force who want and are available for work, and who have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, discouraged workers were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them or there were none for which they would qualify.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/lfcharacteristics.htm#discouraged