"Jobless people are classified into one of two categories by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—either unemployed or not in the labor force. To be classified as unemployed in the month they are surveyed, people must be actively looking for work. If they are not actively looking, they are classified as not in the labor force.

Over time, the definition of “officially unemployed” has gotten more restrictive, and today only 6.097 million working age Americans are considered to be in that category.

Meanwhile, a staggering 99.800 million working age Americans are considered to be “not in the labor force”.

When you add both categories together, you get a total of 105.897 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

Let me try to put that into perspective.

During the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, that number never even got up to 90 million.

So that means that the number of working age Americans that are not employed at this moment far surpasses anything that we witnessed during the Great Recession.

Please do not believe the garbage that the federal government is trying to sell you.

Unemployment is not low. In fact, John Williams estimates that the real rate of unemployment in this country is somewhere around 25 percent."

NOPE... a decimal point Larry... not a comma... OOPS

I am one of the Americans "not in the work force." I am retired. Some 40% of older people who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 chose to retire. "But even if retirees return to work at the average pre-pandemic pace, it will take more than two years to bounce back from the recent surge in retirements," the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas found.

working- age Larry... that definitely excludes YOU

"Lost their jobs to Covid"... LOL... Lost their jobs to democrat lockdowns...

According to the BLS, the largest decreases in job openings were in health care and social assistance (-285,000), finance and insurance (-139,000), and other services (-78,000). Job openings increased in educational services (+45,000), state and local government education (+37,000), and federal government (+24,000).

The "Jobs Report," is made up of private sector, non-government, jobs. Regardless of this irrelevant post or the following nonsensical one. Jobs were added to the economy 250% more than expected.

And yet the number of working-age Americans that are NOT EMPLOYED increased to over 105 MILLION...

The private sector payroll company known as ADP changed its methodology for determining jobs added to the economy resulting in the report of 497,000 new jobs. The following is from a news report:

"The ADP employment report showed that 497K nonfarm private jobs were added in June, a pick up from the 267K jobs added last month. The latest figure is more than double the forecast of 228K new private jobs.

The forecast for the forthcoming BLS report is that 205,000 private nonfarm jobs were added last month. However, the forecast for the full nonfarm jobs (the PAYEMS number) is for 225,000 jobs to have been added."

While I like ADP's numbers much more than those produced by BLS, most people rely on the latter. I could continue to "compare apples to oranges" using figures that give me an advantage. But, I do not want to be knowingly misleading. I will return to using BLS numbers. I expect to be criticized for this. So, what?