Earlier quoted context omitted.
The laid-off email job corporate worker isn't going to take a job for $15/hr at the Flying J unclogging toilets. You can't use the total national average unemployment rate, which has issues of its own, to say the economy is healthy. In the same way, the stock market indices aren't helpful either beyond catastrophic values.
I don't claim that it can be used to say the economy is healthy. I take issue with OP's claim that large layoffs necessarily imply recession. Unless you know that the laid off workers aren't rehired by a competitor, you don't know if the layoff isn't just an outcome of competition. The national unemployment rate is a proxy for it. At least at the first order, if a large number of people are being laid off (and this i…
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
Another fun fact. If I work 2 jobs at 2 different employers I'm counted as 2 employed people.
https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesfaq.htm
There's some much noise in "unemployment rate" that I would argue it's essentially useless for most purposes.