Unemployment as an economic indicator

Here is a link to an blog/post/commentary about the unemployment measures and it explains pretty well about how they calculate them. The author raises some concerns about these methods and references them. I agree with his viewpoint that it is inappropriate to dismiss them with "a shrug and an it's a lagging indicator". I am not so sure I totally agree with him -- because if we are looking at trend data then looking at the changes could be useful -- and if we understand all the different measures (which we don't - they are reported but rarely explained) we understand that they are providing us with different and complementary information.

For example, although we may be overestimating the total unemployment -- say at 10% and it increases to 12% by that same measure -- it is still telling us something (the "real rate" was perhaps 8.1% and increased to 9.9%). Is it the same thing? Are we too hung up on accuracy? Is it still useful to decision makers even if it is overestimated?

His comments in the last paragraph were telling -- the number of new unemployment claims remains useful to business investment decisions.

What do you think -- have I misread him?

http://seekingalpha.com/article/141291-are-unemployment-numbers-bogus?source=article_sb_picks