They also don't account for people who have reentered the job force and are keeping unemployment up. So that criticism swings both ways. At any rate, I suspect people on this board who are interested in economics are aware of the limitations of the BLS's measuring quirks.

At any rate, all the actual data linked in this thread points to the view that unemployment is not at its peak since the great depression. Unless you post something credible to refute that, I'm going to assume that I was right about this point and that your hypothesis is unsupported.

There actually is a point about suicides and other problems: During the early 1980s when the Rust Belt was suffering, the rates of divorce, domestic violence, infant mortality, alcoholism, and suicide all went through the roof.

Sadly I blame the UAW, for then and for what's happened to Detroit since, but it still happened. It was grim. Sadly, a UAW like solution solves some problems but creates some bigger ones including just killing off the whole industry it tried to 'organize'.