Unemployment is not generated by looking at the number of people who have applied for unemployment. The number that tracks how many people who have applied for unemployment is called "jobless claims" by the BLS I believe. Unemployment numbers are imperfect but they give a pretty good idea of what's going on. In my city homeless counts are done with a point in time count where workers canvas the city for a whole day. By gathering the data of people who have experienced homeless at that point in time they can extrapolate how many people were homeless for the year, for how long a part of the year and for how long the average person spends homeless. There are a few other survey methods that are used to try and get a better picture, but the point in time count is the big all hands on deck one day orgy of homeless quantification. Your shit is super dodgy.which really only track the number of people who have applied for unemployment
the "which really" of authority, lol. You are way off the mark.
Current Population Survey provides this, if anyone is wondering. BLS has a faq page with an answer about how it gets the data.Unemployment is not generated by looking at the number of people who have applied for unemployment.