I'm not making blind assumptions. I've studies unemployment statistics and aware of how they exclude things and can lag and generally are kind of rig the calculation. I'm just here making a passing comment, so I'm not going to lay all the evidence out there with citations, but feel free to have a LLM tell you all about it. I'm also aware there is another statistic called underemployment which is what I described, so no, I did not replace anything with my imagination. I just don't have any source of data to say exactly what is what right now, but based on a lot of signals I'm seeing (knowing a few recent grads, knowing how many of my mid-career peers are not hiring and actually looking for additional efficiencies, having a few friends finding it impossible to find work even with experience, etc) - I feel/assume the stat as reported is not telling the whole story and the original article was trying to shed light on what's going on. Sometimes boots on the ground conversations is the best way to know the truth today versus just looking at data/stats.