A typical way to fudge unemployment statistics is to push people out of unemployment benefits, which is the statistic that is usually taken as a measure of unemployment.

So, if I have this right...

The total population is divided between:

• employed
  
• unemployed (meaning on unemployment benefits)
  
• inactive (meaning none of the above)

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman