[cabaalis]

Having observed the use of unemployment numbers for political reasons over the years, my opinion is that this "stopped actively looking" idea is used when there is not another valid criticism of the state of the economy available and the speaker still wishes to cast shade.

[mattbrewsbytes]

Ok, this seems plausible as to why that metric is counted by BLS separately. Politicians change unemployment coverage and stop counting people that move off unemployment funds to a different category, looks like they did something.