You said the examples I gave weren’t counted as unemployed. I showed you that they were.
All I was doing was giving examples of what natural unemployment is, and how that means there will always be a certain number of people who are unemployed.
Your uncle wouldn’t have counted as unemployed while he was sick.
If you’re interested in how they collect the data and come up with the unemployment rate etc figures it’s all here:
(Stats NZ is independent of the government as well by the way, so these methods won’t change just because the government has changed)
You can be recorded as unemployed without receiving any kind of benefit (like my friend above), likewise you can be receiving a benefit of some kind but also be counted as employed. I think that’s where you’re a bit confused - the unemployment rate data isn’t collected simply by counting how many people are receiving a benefit.