Max, self-employed people don't show up on payrolls. Thus, they are not counted when employment is calculated. The numbers would not match up. People who are not working at all but have money to support themselves are considered unemployed and count on unemployment rolls. I could not work right now, have 10 million in the back, and when the survey dude calls and I tell him I'm not working, I would be counted as being "unemployed."
Our current employment is at 5.6%. That is a good historical average. The only reason there is a huge whine-fest about it is because the jobs that are being lost are low-level jobs that we can ship over to india. The "high-level" white collar jobs going bye bye are jobs that are not worth the prices that are being paid to American employees. The 90's tech boom/bust was filled with these types of jobs.
There is the unemployment stats since 1948. You can see that without the .com situation, clinton's employment rate would have sucked. An interesting thing to see is the unemployment rates for Clinton's presidency during the '96 campaign...
You should also take a gander at the first four years of Clinton's presidency. "His" unemployment numbers sucked as well and he didn't have a large world-wide war and terrorists scares to worry about either.
Ronnie Raygun 
Hybrid Mode
