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to expand on Baraka Guru
The unemployment rate is calculated through a survey that asks people whether they worked for money, and, if not, whether they looked for a job. You have to have actively looked for a job the past month to be counted as economically active, and therefore be counted as employed or unemployed.
That is the basic unemployment rate.
On top of that, the department of labor also looks for what is called "hidden unemployment." I.e., people who are not counted as economically active because they gave up on searching for a job (discouraged workers) or who have a job but are still looking for one (underemployed).
So the administration is not trying to hide anything, and people who quote the 9% figure are actually quoting the figure that has always been quoted.
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