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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14 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

All the other comments have very good answers.

In addition:
> I understand the need to exclude the […] homemakers

How do you differentiate between someone living off a trust fund, off welfare, and a homemaker.

These things are not remotely mutually exclusive and very hard to define reliably…

In the end, counting the people who look for jobs but can’t find one is a much better indicator of how the labor market performs.

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