Adolph had the solution to unemployment.

Declare being unemployed criminal.

Send them to the labor camps.

Then they're not unemployed - they're convicts.

Problem solved.

We're getting close.

Up until around 1970 or into the early '80s, the CPI actually meant something, and you could track the "value of the dollar" (in loaves of stale bread) back to about 1800. The current CPI changes the metrics every time a new report comes out, there is no continuity to the reported changes, and there is no "base value" to tie this quarter's change to what happened in the previous quarter. Quite obviously, recent administrations just write down the result they want reported, and the peasants back at the office must change the rules to get the result the boss wants.

Much the same "manipulation" has happened to the reports on unemployment. If they're not collecting (or in the process of begging for) unemployment, they don't count. That leaves a whole bunch of people who "aren't there" - because they don't qualify for an unemployment check, or because they were self-employed, or for dozens of other reasons.

John