Unemployment is on everyone’s mind these days, but because the labor force excludes discouraged job seekers, the actual unemployment rate isn’t the most informative metric to look at.  For some reason, analysts don’t seem to pay much attention to the employment-population ratio, which compares the number of people who are employed to the total non-institutionalized population over the age of 16.  Unless people are so discouraged that they’re committing crimes to get into jail, or the government is so desperate to produce good numbers that it’s sending more people to jail, the employment-to-population numbers will be difficult to manipulate.  Data stretching back to 1970 can be found below...