I'm sure the officially published number is suspect for a variety of reasons, but doubt it is as high (~25%) as they claim.
Then there was that whole adding of either 80,000 or was it 800,000 jobs after the covid, when the President AutoPen regime "allowed" people to go back to work. I think those job gains went Poof!
As you may recall, Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief for cooking the books recently. This was mainly for them claiming ~1Million jobs were added just ahead of the 2024 election and then Poof!, gone just after it.
Then there were a lot of terminations from the DOGE episode, in recent history, and now more coming during the Schmucker shutdown. A whole bunch more.
There is the whole: How do you account for jobs related to illegal aliens occupying? Is it a job loss if they are deported back to their home country?
What about job exchanges? To wit: If you deport an illegal alien and a recently terminated employee takes that job, how does it count? According to Rep. Becca Balint (D) Vermont, there is still a need for the job: “
if we don’t have avenues for people to come here legally to work or to build a home here… we’re not gonna have anyone around to wipe our a**es because we don’t have enough people”
Here's a more sticky issue, just out:
Federal employees lied to 'work' multiple jobs
EPA lawyer told managers he missed work because he was with the CIA
By Jeremy Portnoy, Real Clear Wire October 12, 2025
Topline: Working for the government is supposed to be a full-time job, but several employees have been caught working for several federal agencies simultaneously — or at least claiming to be.
In a Sep. 23 letter to the new Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor, Sen. Joni Ernst identified $1.2 million in salary paid to employees with duplicative jobs.
Key facts: From 2021 to 2024, then-Department of Housing and Urban Development employee Crissy Monique Baker also worked remotely as a contractor for AmeriCorps and the National Institutes of Health. She was paid almost $226,000 for hours she never worked, including 13 days in June when she claimed to be working 26 hours per day. Baker pleaded guilty to fraud this June.
Daniel Glauber was convicted in 2017 of working for both OPM and the National Security Agency for four months and earning over $70,000. Both jobs were in-person, but Glauber wasn't showing up to either one, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.
Attorney John Beale earned $900,000 over 13 years by telling his managers at the Environmental Protection Agency that he often missed work because he also had a job with the Central Intelligence Agency, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. He admitted in 2013 that he was actually traveling overseas and spending time at his vacation home in Massachusetts, and was sentenced to prison...
Does each count as one or is it two job losses?!? Seeing whereas many of these "double" workers were likely cause by the covid remote work, where they already scratched in previous adjustment?
So yea, I suspect the "published" unemployment rate is suspect, yet not sure how to correctly calculate it in such a dynamic jobs environment. Come to think of it, maybe it's actually higher than 25%.
