According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics the unemployment...

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics the unemployment rate has come down from just below 10% at its peak to now 6.1%. This 6.1% is called the U3 unemployment rate... I should give a little history about the way the unemployment rate is measured to give you an idea of how easily it is for the US government to alter the way unemployment rate is issued.
The US government used to advertise or issue whats called the U6 unemployment rate ( which is currently at 12.1% for 2014) but in 1992 Bill Clinton in his infinite wisdom decided that the U3 rate was a more accurate depiction of unemployment ( Yes, surprisingly the governments new illustration of the unemployment rate suddenly made everything look a lot rosier... with a brush of a pen the unemployment rate halved over the following few months and as their was little publicity about the changes made to the system very few of the public were aware of these changes...
So, based on the Australian way of calculating unemployment and prior to 1992 the actual real US unemployment rate is currently 12.1% for 2014. You can actually just go to the unemployment section of the Bureau of Labor Statistics website and get this information or just google 2014 U6 unemployment rate for the US.
Anyway... i could ramble all day about the impact that that little change made on the perception of unemployment but thats for another day....
I think the most telling factor about how the unemployment rate makes no sense or reasoning is on the labour force participation rate which is currently sitting at its lowest in 50 years. And to give you an idea about why this unemployment rate makes no sense the labour force participation rate was sitting at 66.4% at the start of 2007 and has been going down every year at an average of 0.5% and now stands at 62.8%.
At 2010 when the US came off its "peak" unemployment rate of nearly 10% the labour force participation rate stood at 64.2%... and now we are at 6.1% unemployment the rate is 62.8%.... something fishy going on here i think... too much disparity between the unemployment rate and the labour force participation rate.
Now the US government would like you to think that the labour force is dwindling due to more people retiring but in actual fact it is quite the reverse. Older people are actually staying in the workforce a lot longer and there are more younger people entering the workforce than those people retiring and here is the current Gallup Poll about retirement :

http://capricorn.bc.edu/agingandwork/database/browse/facts/fact_record/5670/all#

"According to a 2014 Gallup report, "Americans' average self-reported age of retirement has slowly moved upward...the average retirement age was 57 in both 1991 and 1993. From 2002 through 2012, the average hovered around 60. Over the past two years, the average age at which Americans report retiring has increased to 62."
So in just the last 2 years when the labour force participation rate has come down and yet less and less Americans are retiring, in fact if you delve into the information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics you will find that approximately 6000 Americans turn 60 every day which is 2.2 Million per year reach retirement ( How many of those actually retire I cannot seem to find anywhere online ).
4,043,000 Americans turn 18yo every year... thats a full 1.843 Million above those that retire every year... so irrespective of how many Americans retire each year those people of workable age or the labour force participation rate should be increasing if the unemployment rate is decreasing...

Labor Force Participation Rate from the Bureau of Labour Statistics:

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

So, how is the labour force participation rate coming down so markedly over the same period when unemployment is coming down at the same time?... technically based on the population growth increase Vs Retirement statistics the labour force participation should be increasing not decreasing over the same period shouldnt it? I mean there is now over 3% more people employed than there was 3 years ago but there are 2% less people in the labour force participation rate?...
So even using the U6 unemployment figures it still does not make sense as this has come down from a high of around 14.5% to 12.1% over the same period... hmmm... how is this possible?
In 2007 the labour force participation rate was 66.2% and unemployment 6%.
In 2014 the labour force participation rate is 62.8% and unemployment is 6.1%
Approximately 8 million net more people entered the workforce or are of workable age over the last 5 years than those who retired and yet unemployment continues to move down and so does the participation rate... go figure huh?
Many years ago i used to laugh at the people at shadowstats.com  website thinking that they published outrageous information and blatant misinformation. However, my attitude has certainly changed and if you look at the percentage disparity between workforce participation and the unemployment rate and add that percentage as a figure to the U6 unemployment figures then the shadowstats approximation of real unemployment certainly looks to be very close to the mark.

Anyway... enough of my boring statistical information
Now I need to do some serious Xboxing to clear my head of all the garbage i just read...