I my country you have to regularly check in with the bureau for unemployment to be included in the stats, even though that bureau hadn’t found a job for anyone ever.

I assume that’s how it works in many other countries.

Unemployed is the one actively looking for a job, not the one that’s just to working. At least that’s how governments seem to look at it, and their way of figuring out who’s looking is incorrect.

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dfdydx an hour ago | parent [-]

Where do you live? Most countries use labour force surveys, it's orthogonal to registration to unemployment agencies.

	▲	DrProtic 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I looked it up and I have to correct myself. So EU/Eurostat has surveys, Serbia does too (I’m from Serbia). However most countries have also national way of determining the rate that works how I described, and they may differ quite a lot from Eurostat. I guess EU introduced surveys with Eurostat so countries don’t juke the stats. For example - Denmark computes net unemployment straight from benefit and PES registers — administrative coverage is complete enough to do it without asking anyone. It still runs an LFS for the ILO figure. - Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechia, Spain publish monthly registered counts that dominate domestic debate, exactly the way NSZ figures circulate in Serbia. Each uses its own national definition, so none is comparable across borders. - Finland keeps a register series noticeably above its LFS count, similar in shape to the NSZ/ARS gap.