If you figure unemployment the way they did from 1900-1990 you will find we are actually at 23% unemployment. To make a comparison to the Great Deprerssion's 25-40% unemployment levels shouldn't you use the same measuring stick?
That's fair I guess, but the reason they changed it was because it was a poor indicator of economic performance - it wasn't accurate enough in identifying trends that one would base policy decisions off of. The FED uses the NAIRU, for example, which would be a different number under a different calculation which could lead them to print more money than they should. They break statistic indicators down like this for good reason, another example being the CPI vs. core inflation numbers.
Seriously though, if you took a gander at the employment to population ratio you'd quickly fall in love with it. It doesn't even rely on including lazy kids or grandma into the unemployment calculations to make this "recovery" look bad:
see? You dont need to go through mental gymnastics to show how poor the recovery has been...
Oh, I almost forgot... Remember the whole inflation debate we're always having?
This is core inflation but it's slightly different, and published by the atlanta fed...
This one here is from the Cleveland Fed:
It really is shaping up to be a lost decade, sadly.