>"The reported U-3 unemployment rate is measuring the rate of full-time job loss in the economy. That makes a good barometer of the economy as it can describe if job losses are accelerating or not."
I think this is a perceptive statement; U-3 is most like the derivative of unemployment, so it's sensitive to changes, but not to steady-state issues.
We should probably look at U-6 to help understand where we stand long-term, and U-3 to get a glimpse of whether things are getting better or worse. Unfortunately, I don't think many people want to think about these issues separately, so they'll only want one number.
The reported U-3 unemployment rate is measuring the rate of full-time job loss in the economy. That makes a good barometer of the economy as it can describe if job losses are accelerating or not.
You can pick any of the alternate measures and they all say pretty much the same thing. But by overlooking those who have dropped out of the labor market, the U-3 focuses more on what is happening with the labor market now not several years ago.
You can try this for yourself by plotting the U-1 through U-6 rates on the same graph and picking the one you think is most useful as a snapshot of the labor force. You'll probably land on the U-3 as the U-1 doesn't show upticks in unemployment very well and the U-6 muddies the severity of upticks in unemployment. The broad strokes will be the same, but the nuance is missing.