> A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can't find one — is unemployed

"living wage" here adds a layer of confusion. Some argue "living wage" is at least $15 an hour, some argue even more. Certainly living in San Francisco on $15 an hour wage, even working fulltime, would be a challenge. However, this has nothing to do with "unemployment" as it is commonly understood. This is just confusing separate economic and societal problems to arrive at flashy number that actually doesn't mean much, as it is a result of different people having different economic and personal challenges.

It's not that deep, or confusing. If you look at the unemployment chart, it has a caption.

   Data: Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity; Chart: Axios Visuals

The source for that data is a hyperlink to [1], which defines the living wage at $20,000 per year before taxes.

> What is the “True Rate of Unemployment”? The True Rate of Unemployment, as defined by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), measures the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is functionally unemployed.

> Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $20,000 annually before taxes.

> Just as an accurate census is a prerequisite to funding American communities equitably, policymakers depend on economic indicators to shape economic policy. LISEP developed the True Rate of Unemployment to provide analysts and decision-makers with a more accurate measure of Americans’ financial well-being.

> For a more in-depth explanation of the True Rate of Unemployment, please reference this white paper[2].

[1] https://www.lisep.org/

[2] https://assets.website-files.com/5f67c16a6ca3251ecc11eca7/5f...

> which defines the living wage at $20,000 per year before taxes.

But why? Just an arbitrary number? What that number means? Defining "functionally unemployed" as "earning less than an arbitrary number we pulled out of our noses" is hugely misleading. Maybe that person can't earn more because they don't have skills, or have personal issues that prevent them from being more productive, or maybe earning high wage is not their priority right now (e.g. internship or apprenticeship). Unemployment has specific meaning - e.g. that by creating more employment opportunities you could fix it. Stuffing anybody that is not earning over $20K, for any reason whatsoever, under the term, just confuses the matters.

I get that it looks flashy - "the government is lying to you, the Real Truth is only available from us!" - but it's not useful to just change definitions of established terms because it sounds good in a soundbite. There are many other terms - like "labor participation", "underemployment", "economical hardship", "working poor", etc. - one could coin many more. Redefining existing one while slapping the misleading label "true" to it is not helping.

Did you read the second link I posted? Because that's spelled out on page 2 in the Methodology section. More generally, are you here for curious conversation? Because your comment is full of generalizations and cynicism rather and does not address anything I, or the linked study, said.

$20,000 was chosen because LISEP concluded that anything beneath that wage could fairly be considered a poverty wage, based on the U.S. poverty guidelines put out by the Department of Health and Human Services, which considers a three-person household to be in poverty if it has an income of less than $20,000 per year.

Which underlines my point - poverty is not the same as unemployment. For starters, not all people live in three-persons households, especially ones that earn low wages (e.g. single young people just starting their professional careers). Secondly, defining every poor person as "unemployed" is making the term meaningless - just say "poor" then.

> Because your comment is full of generalizations and cynicism

I raised very specific issues with this methodology, and with the terminology specifically, but if all you can do is dismiss them as "cynicism" (do you even know what it means? it doesn't match any part of my objections) then fine, whatever.

I am objecting to the use of an established term to mean something this term is not supposed to mean. There's nothing "cynical" about it.

I think you just explained the point of the article to yourself.

That when a politician brags about unemployment being so low to a voter, they're doing so to fool the voter, who likely associate unemployment rate as a measure of how well off everyone is doing, while in reality it doesn't, because if you look at the "true" unemployment, i.e., what that voter is thinking, which is how poor are Americans overall, well you'd actually see a pretty glooming picture with a large number of Americans living below poverty and the number growing year over year.

Unemployment is not the only economic measure. Basically what you're advocating is fighting misleading claims by politicians by creating your own, even more misleading (at least the politicians talk about unemployment when they say "unemployment") metrics which makes even harder for the voter to understand what is going on because it mixes a half-dozen of different societal problems into one number.

> if you look at the "true" unemployment, i.e., what that voter is thinking, which is how poor are Americans overall

Unemployment is not a measure how poor people are. While unemployment can lead to poverty, it's not the same as poverty. It's like saying "we'll add a number of sick people, obese people, people not working out, old people, people eating too much sugar, people not eating enough vegetables, people who smoke and people who drink alcohol - and call it 'true health index' and will demand to treat this number as if all these people were actually sick". Somehow you think it's more clear this way?

> well you'd actually see a pretty glooming picture with a large number of Americans living below poverty

There already are statistical measures of poverty. You don't need to call them "true unemployment". Call them "measures of poverty".