Unemployed People not looking for work are not considered part of the labor force and so aren't used in the equation for unemployment %. It's a super misleading statistic.
I'm very aware. But that doesn't mean we don't have those numbers to. We do. We know there's 1.6M people on unemployment insurance, which is the official unemployment number, and 6M people unemployed that are out of insurance benefits or otherwise need a source of income to sustain themselves.The unemployment rate is figured based on those folks actively LOOKING for work. That excludes a whole gob of folks since Covid. So of course it makes the unemployment rate look low.
Those are both very low numbers. They are largely unskilled or skill mismatched. They're not the people that can solve the labor problems at Ford or GE, the local machinist shop or the airlines.
None of that changes the fact that as the boomers leave their jobs, there's not enough people to replace them due to demographics. When there are more job openings that people on unemployment, who are likely not remotely qualified for most of those jobs, you have the problems you're seeing.