OECD efforts at harmonization notwithstanding (and remember some of their stuff is pretty laughable, I guess because they have to pretend the US is a 'developed' country on par with a W. European one or Canada), I highly doubt the federal government has a very good grasp of the employment/unemployment picture in the US.
For one thing, has the federal government ever harmonized its data gathering and analysis with all the different states' 'employment security' offices, let alone all those other places (which, if they did, would seem to make double counting quite possible, but my hunch is that federal estimates of unemployment in the US are way too low)? Besides making some recommendations to make them nationwide as user-unfriendly as a post office or social security office, I highly doubt it. Except for defense, intelligence, and prisons, the federal gov't is a mile wide and a millimeter deep.
Nevertheless, I'll press on with this, read over the federal criteria, the European criteria, and the OECD and get back to the list on this in regards to Japan.
Oh, and it was noted on the list about the homeless in Japan. These seem to be older, mostly male day workers who lost any chance at day work. I've seen large numbers of them in Tokyo and the Kansai (especially after the earthquake). I remember being flashed by one my first week in Japan back in 1989 in the mensroom at Osaka Station; the same week a yakuza tried to give me a 10,000 yen bill while riding on the loopline train (but then quickly withdrew it when I took him up on his offer of handouts for foreign beggers).
Charles Jannuzi