<story><title>Number of unemployed persons per job opening</title><url>https://www.bls.gov/charts/job-openings-and-labor-turnover/unemp-per-job-opening.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pmoriarty</author><text>Remember that the government doesn&amp;#x27;t count people who are not looking for work (perhaps because they&amp;#x27;ve given up hope of ever finding a job, for example) as &amp;quot;unemployed&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;So the actual number of people who are not working is certainly higher.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rmah</author><text>This is a myth.  The government publishes multiple unemployment rates (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;news.release&amp;#x2F;empsit.t15.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;news.release&amp;#x2F;empsit.t15.htm&lt;/a&gt;) along with the &amp;quot;official&amp;quot; headline rate.  You probably want the U-4 or U-5 rate.  In reality, all of the rates are highly correlated and what&amp;#x27;s important is the rate relative to historical norms.</text></comment>
<story><title>Number of unemployed persons per job opening</title><url>https://www.bls.gov/charts/job-openings-and-labor-turnover/unemp-per-job-opening.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pmoriarty</author><text>Remember that the government doesn&amp;#x27;t count people who are not looking for work (perhaps because they&amp;#x27;ve given up hope of ever finding a job, for example) as &amp;quot;unemployed&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;So the actual number of people who are not working is certainly higher.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joe_the_user</author><text>Oppositely, I suspect they do count fake (or unfillable) job openings that employers post for a variety of reasons (needed formally for internal promotions to the need to say you&amp;#x27;re hiring in order to say you&amp;#x27;re growing to bureaucracies confused about they&amp;#x27;re aims etc).</text></comment>