I think the bit you're missing is that there is a cohort of people who haven't retired, precisely because they lack an income stream that is enough to live on, but they are counted as retired by most measures of unemployment.
My father turns 70 in three days, and he has struggled to find long-term work for the last ten years. He'll work for a year, search for work for 15 months, work for another 18 months, etc. He would like to be working now, but COVID-19 probably marks the end of his working days forever.
He's been counted as retired a few times during the last decade, though he never was until this year.
How do you know he was counted as retired? BLS shares their survey and how they determine if someone is unemployed - they basically ask if they are available to work and actively seeking work. I didn’t see any cutoff for age.
I could definitely be wrong, but my understanding is that when unemployment benefits run out, so does one's status as unemployed, since they've lost the point of contact that enables them to ask those questions.
At least twice in the last decade, he's been unemployed so long his benefits ran out. Perhaps the label in that case isn't "retired," but he wasn't counted as unemployed, either.
Number of unemployment insurance claims is sometimes cited as an economic indicator, but it's definitely not the main measure of unemployment.
The BLS tracks six measures of unemployment rate via survey called U1-U6. U3 is the official unemployment rate, but they report the others as well[1].
For U3, you are considered unemployed if you do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work. U4 is that plus anyone who wants a job, but gave up looking because they don't think they will find one. U6 adds in people who only have part-time work but want full-time work.
Check out the link in my reply above, it's pretty interesting. It lays out exactly how they collect the unemployment statistics and calls out that they can't use unemployment insurance numbers for the exact reason you said - benefits run out, but people are still looking for work.
They basically survey 60,000 people and ask a specific set of questions to figure out which "bucket" people are in.
U-3 does not exclude those whose benefits have run out but are still actively looking for work. It relies on social insurance claims in part, but also uses surveys to estimate how many folks are looking for work that aren’t receiving unemployment.
My father turns 70 in three days, and he has struggled to find long-term work for the last ten years. He'll work for a year, search for work for 15 months, work for another 18 months, etc. He would like to be working now, but COVID-19 probably marks the end of his working days forever.
He's been counted as retired a few times during the last decade, though he never was until this year.