Notice anything odd about the right-side of this Fox News chart? 9.0 and 8.6 are at the same level. Intentional, or incompetence?
Anyhow, I keep hearing complaints from conservatives about how the general unemployment rate is calculated, implying that Obama is trying to hoodwink people. The most common approach stops counting people as unemployed if they claim they "stopped looking", which would exclude some long-term unemployed people. However, there is no measurement technique that is a perfect replacement.
You can simply ask people if they are unemployed, but the answer is generally relative. For example, if one's spouse is working and there is no immediate need for more income, the other spouse may opt to stay home and take care of domestic chores. However, if they happened to be offered a very lucrative job, they most likely would take that job even if they were not otherwise seeking employment.
The same would go for a retired person. If someone offered an average retired person an $80 per hour job, most would jump at the chance. If you have a perfect way to measure unemployment, I invite you to publish it. Otherwise, stop whining.
