It's just never a very accurate measurement of true joblessness. The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures unemployment through monthly household surveys called the Current Population Survey (CPS). But if you were unemployed last year and didn't fill out this particular survey, you wouldn't necessarily be included in this measurement. Of course not every household in the country can be counted, so the CPS is meant to be representative of the U.S. population. There are about 60,000 households in specific geographic areas in the U.S. used for this survey, which translates into approximately 110,000 individuals, according to the BLS.
Either way, this latest report is nothing to boast about considering unemployment has been above 8 percent 36 consecutive months for the first time since the Great Depression.
And that 8.3% doesn't accurately represent every demographic such as the youth group which is at 20% unemployment, another all time high.