That doesn't measure underemployment, nor does it measure people who've given up on finding work. That's why it needs to be considered alongside things like the labor force participation rate - which has been on a downward trend since 2000 - and alongside wage growth, which has lagged below inflation since the 70's.

> January 2024 saw the most growth followed closely by December 2023.

Which jobs, specifically? At what pay? Destroying a $50k/year job to create two $25k/year jobs ain't progress.

This focus on unemployment is absurd. It has nothing to do with the wealth gap.

More people working, but always with less wealth, while companies keep getting richer.

We could as a society literally end unemployment at any time by redistributing some of the wealth. We don't because it's more profitable to have people worrying if they will be able to eat every month.

Wage growth has lagged behind inflation and cost of living since the 70's. There have been multiple job market crashes in my lifetime; I entered the workforce in the middle of the 2008 recession. There have been multiple layoff waves since COVID alone, during each of which companies would lay off significant fractions of their workforce despite making record profits for no discernible reason other than "well everyone else is doing it so we'll do it, too". How much longer of a time frame do you expect me to examine?

> Expecting a system to be getting strictly better every second of every day is utopian.

Employers have been increasingly shafting their employees for decades. I expect a system to not spend multiple decades getting worse.

> shutting down legacy industries

My last two jobs were as a cloud infrastructure engineer. If even cloud computing is a "legacy industry" then the vast majority of the users on this website are utterly screwed.