Replies

Yashcheritsiy: "Because of the way they calculate U3, this (should) ironically make the U3 start shooting back up as tons of people reapply for benefits."

1rudeboy: "The above is incorrect. Completely. Where does this misconception come from?"

It comes from the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics:

U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)

1rudeboy: "Most annoying is to correct someone only to see them repeat the same falsehood later."

You shouldn't post falsehoods then!

Employed persons consist of:

All persons who did any work for pay or profit during the survey reference week.
All persons who did at least 15 hours of unpaid work in a family-owned enterprise operated by someone in their household.
All persons who were temporarily absent from their regular jobs, whether they were paid or not.

Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.

Persons not in the labor force are those who are not classified as employed or unemployed during the survey reference week.

Millions of unemployed people have dropped dropped out of the workforce because they are no longer actively looking for work. With this extension of benefits millions of "unemployed, but not counted as unemployed" people will now begin to look for work. This will in fact, increase the total number of unemployed, which in turn will cause the U-3 number to rise!