Once your benefits are gone, you’re off the books. Once you’re off the books, you don’t count anymore. So, figures on unemployment is not an objective look at the unemployment situation.
I’m amazed at the number of otherwise intelligent people who believe this. Get a clue, people: Even the government wouldn’t be so stupid as to stop counting you as unemployed just because your benefits run out.
There’s an interesting discussion of unemployment and measurement thereof at NationMaster.com. It looks at both the critics’ perspective about the way US statistics are derived, and the rationale behind why that methodology is used.
There’s a 1980s show that comes on PBS occasionally where this professor talks about economics. One episode is all about unemployment, and he talks about statistics and accuracy and sample size. Basically IIRC the agency calls up 65,000 people and finds out their current employment status, since a sample size this large is high enough for a certain required level of confidence.