This is the key.

The government and media largely rely on U-3 (IIRC) when reporting unemployment. The upside is consistency - they all use the same number. The downside is this figure may not be fully representative of the economy.

I would argue that U-5 or U-6 better represent the state of the economy (as it relates to employment), as both included some set of under-employed and recently-given-up would-be workers.

But, we'd have to make a concerted effort to cut over to those numbers to avoid confusion.

U-3 will still be useful for answering many questions even if it becomes a lesser-used stat among politicians, because it's been tracked for much longer and because it's tracked by almost every nation. You're not going to magically squeeze U-6 numbers out of Ireland in 1952.

Examples:

"How bad is our current recession compared to the great depression for the workforce?"

"How might raising the top marginal income tax bracket to 70% affect the labor market?"

"How does relaxing strict immigration policies contribute to job loss in a nation (if at all)?"

Absolutely true. No disagreement there.

But, given an increasing income disparity between the top ~5% and bottom half, and a continuing sense of "being left behind" by many workers in labor-intensive industries, it seems doing a better job of describing those disenchanted workers (whether they be part-time at AutoZone, or recently given up looking, etc) would be beneficial to all.

For one of those disenchanted employees, seeing "Unemployment is at all-time lows! The DOW is at a record high!" on the evening news (while they're working 3 part-time jobs for $9/hour and zero benefits) isn't just unhelpful, it's insulting.