CNBC and every other financial news site screams about the current unemployment rate. This information, and anything else related to labor economics and statistics, is brought to you by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), part of the United States Department of Labor.
Everyone from local governments, other federal agencies, labor representatives, and the general public relies on the BLS for important information related to the minimum wage, what a family needs to earn to have a decent standard of living in each state, and what the average salary is for every type of job you can think of.
The question remains as to why they never seem to include “discouraged” workers who have given up looking for a job as part of the unemployment number. If they did include those numbers, the economy would look...not quite as good. That's not politically healthy though, so the better numbers are always reported. For better insight as to how and why this process of false reporting continues, read 1984.