It means that when the Household Employment Survey people call and ask you (after finding out you're unemployed), whether you looked for work during this past week, you say no. That's how the statistic is compiled...
In reality, it's just another aspect of duplicitous 'accounting' practices to make our unemployment rate look a lot lower than it really is. The real unemployment rate is up between 9% to 11% or so, I'd guess.
Also, to follow up on this, most all of those who end up in the 'not looking' category are married with a working spouse, or indeed living with blood relatives.
Not all of Texas ---actually parts of Texas are high-welfare. In this area of Texas, many of the NAFTA displaced workers will never work another day in their life. 14,000 in just El Paso lost their jobs and no other business moved in ---many were middle aged, uneducated women with no English language skills and have joined the ever-growing welfare class.
One thing that can lead to 'giving up' is that the longer you've been unemployed, the less HR people want to talk to you. HR people and headhunters curdle when they realize how long you've been out, and never call back. I'm not sure how to get past that; it's a nasty Catch-22.
It's kinda weird. It's like they haven't adjusted their attitude to account for the job market. I could kind of understand that attitude if it were 2000 and a programmer hadn't worked in a year; probably some bug-eyed psycho ready to go postal... But now?
It also appears that part-time retail work isn't really an option, because the employers expect you'll leave ASAP, so they aren't interested.
I've been lucky in being able to rely on family. I've gone back to school, for now pursuing an MS in Computer Science, though I'm not sure if that's the best way to go with the jobs going overseas; even if I were to write some popular software and start a company, it'd probably be re-done by 'open source' advocates who'd give their version away, which is hard to compete with.
I fear it's entirely possible that I'll get the MSCS and still be unable to find work due to having been out of work for so long. Then, I suppose, it'll be time for another degree. ;^)
(The one bright side is that when you've been unemployed this long, you're eligible for maximum financial aid and loans. I would probably have been worse off had I tried to go back to school soon after I was laid off, when my prior year's income was $80k, not $6k of unemployment.)
The best career path seems to involve things that aren't easily done overseas; things that have to are hands-on, and involve things that aren't easily moved. Health care, maintenance, other things. People aren't going to go to China for a checkup (but they might go for a quick kidney transplant from a prisoner donor) and they aren't going to send their Volvo to India for a tuneup, and they aren't going to fly in a plumber from Moscow.