You're right, this report serves as an input to the total calculation.: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf - and my point should simply have been made made directly about this input (original thoughts around this data point remain) and not the calculation as a whole. My bad.
No it doesn't. BLS acknowledges and discredits this misconception. This data is not relevant to your claims, instead it shows unemployment insurance claims reducing over 2017-2018.