>If you dig deeper into the unemployment numbers, you will find that most of the reason unemployment is going down is because many have dropped off the unemployment rolls and are not counted. There is another number (I can't remember what it is called) that is not widely reported that has total unemployment closer to 17%.

When the statistics start to look ugly, change the definition. Once upon a time it was simple: there's the workforce, out of them some are employed, some aren't. The latter are unemployed. Oh wait, that's too much... let's not count the whole workforce - omit those who don't want to work, count only those who want, i.e. those registered as unemployed.

Years later, even that's too much... so let's drop those who stayed unemployed too long (more than 6 or 9 months). Now that's better.

I've seen someone doing the calculation the old way few years ago: the capable population vs employed. It was around 20%.