The official unemployment rate where I live is supposedly 4.9% and rising. However, people who aren't looking for employment anymore are not counted, and there are plenty of those. Not added either is that the labour market is completely out of balance. Apparently, there is demand for people in technical jobs and in low-paid blue collar jobs, but higher education produces a lot of people with a degree in art, law, sociology or psychology (fields that want to introduce a cap on the number of students admitted each year). These people, if they can attain non-flexible employment, aren't paid that much. Professional jurists in large companies aren't paid that much more than policemen.