So you’re assuming that all these people who are “discouraged”, “underemployed” etc are in that position voluntarily ?
Sold to you.
“Discouraged” shows up in U5, which is fairly close to U3, so that’s just a red herring. “Underemployed” is an economic problem, but if someone is working only 25 hours a day, instead of 35, that’s very different than reporting him as if he were working 0 hours a day, which is what you were doing by referring to U6 as if it were unemployment.
And, yes: SOME “underemployed” people are in that category rather voluntarily. Case in point, while I was working on my Master’s degree, I was “underemployed.” Had an ideal job come along, I would have slowed down my degree work. I even applied for several jobs. But I was unwilling to take a full time job outside of my career path because I was getting the bills paid, and having the opportunity to work towards a better career.
Lots of working moms have been in similar situations.
THere’s a reason that the news media and the government have never widely reported U6 data, and that’s because it’s not very economically meaningful.