i've certainly never been counted towards that unemployment metric any time I've been unemployed. Am I not part of the labor force? The metric only counts people who actively apply for unemployment relief. So either I'm not part of the labor force—doubtful, as I'm employed—or "unemployment" doesn't mean "wants a job and doesn't have one".

Simply: the way the federal government employs the word "unemployment" is, at best, disingenuous; I suspect it is intentional, though, to obscure the intent to leave some part of the population without employment to keep the labor market weak.