Why do unemployment statistics only count people who want to work and not the actual number of unemployed people?

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I understand the need to exclude the young, old, disabled, and homemakers but why do unemployment statistics not include those who are simply living off of welfare and not intending to work (or on the opposite end of the spectrum, those living off of a trust fund)? Is this subset of the population just not big enough to be worth including in the statistics?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s no point, is there? The unemployment rate’s role is a wind gauge of the supply of labor vs the demand for labor. If someone has decided not to contribute to the supply, for whatever reason, it’s not helpful to the data set or our understanding of the economy to include them. You’ve already conceded that 90% of the unemployed and not looking make sense to exclude, why include the remaining 10% who aren’t elderly/disabled/underage/homemaking?

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