[itsoktocry]

>But all these statistics are proxies for how citizens are doing. In general, hardships increase as unemployment goes up, whatever way you measure it. It's usually better to look at all of them jointly, and focus on differences instead of the absolute rates.

Well stated.

We see the same issues with GDP; people claiming it doesn't capture a country's well-being. This is not surprising, since it's a measure of economic output. But we know there's a correlation between economic output and societal quality-of-life.

In general, more GDP > less GDP. If you find anomalies that raise interesting questions (ie Canada vs US) you can compare other measures.