"For consistencies sake" (or more likely, to make the numbers look better) the stats have been compiled the same way for a century or more with criteria relevant to an economy mostly employing unskilled manual laborers for factory work and ag work. Because unskilled laborers can find a job if they want in less than a year, they drop off the unemployement rolls after a year. Of course its trivial if you have an esoteric degree and decades of experience to end up in a situation where there are no skilled jobs in your field... at all... regardless how "hot" the economy might be for other people with other skills, and in a year it won't matter anyway as you drop off the list of unemployed and onto NEET or similar status. That is the situation with almost every person in the linked article, they have 2020 skills and experience, no jobs exist for those skills, and they'll will only appear for a short time in unemployment stats designed to track unskilled manual laborers working at a Ford plant a century ago.