I don't think I misunderstood your comment. I think in decisions about who to include in unemployment statistics, one should just defer to the professional body in charge of them, unless there is a clear methodological reason not to. There is no particular reason to think any rate is the "real" rate, so while it is true there are multiple rates you could compute, the right thing to do is to pick the standard one. And so anyone who relies on the standard rate (politicians, the Fed) is quite correct to do so. Besides, I'm not sure about this, but I have the feeling the unemployment rate by design isn't meant to track structural changes in the economy (and that's fine!), so if you find a structural change in the economy it doesn't track, you'd still be okay using it.

Edit: In fact, there's this (https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed), so it wouldn't be correct at all to call that 'the "real" unemployment rate'.

> Is there only one official definition of unemployment? There is only one official definition of unemployment—people who are jobless, actively seeking work, and available to take a job, as discussed above. The official unemployment rate for the nation is the number of unemployed as a percentage of the labor force (the sum of the employed and unemployed).

> Some have argued, however, that these unemployment measures are too restricted, and that they do not adequately capture the breadth of labor market problems. For this reason, economists at BLS developed a set of alternative measures of labor underutilization. These measures, expressed as percentages, are published every month in The Employment Situation news release. They range from a very limited measure that includes only those who have been unemployed for 15 weeks or more to a very broad one that includes total unemployed, all people marginally attached to the labor force, and all individuals employed part time for economic reasons. More information about the alternative measures is available on the BLS website.