Personally, I don't even go there. By all measures, I haven't been "employed" since the late 90s (when I was briefly an employee of an investment bank for a summer internship). I've run my own businesses, helped others build theirs, worked as a consultant, and done nothing at various times for the past 20 years.

Rather than describe my state of being as "employed" vs "unemployed", I always break it into "working on a project for someone else" vs. "working on my own project" (and sometimes both, and sometimes neither.) Some of those projects generate money. Some of them don't.

It's taken some time, but people get it! I just refuse to play the game :)