Day: August 16, 2025

The term tech giant is used to describe any big technology establishment with a large global footprint. Typically, it is used to refer to the world’s biggest five tech companies—Amazon, Apple, Google (or Alphabet), Meta, and Microsoft—although other huge technology companies also qualify. These giants have a massive influence on the technology industry and the world as a whole.

Tech giants have a lot of power in their industries and are often accused of using that power to control the Internet, skew information or opinions, and create monopolies. Many are subject to anti-trust lawsuits, which seek to limit their control and increase competition for the benefit of consumers.

These giants make products or services that are widely used, which gives them outsized control over the Web and a valuable advertising space. They also innovate new technologies that can transform entire industries. Amazon’s e-commerce site is the world’s largest, giving them tremendous influence on what people buy and the data they generate; Apple makes iOS and macOS, the most widely used mobile and desktop operating systems; and Google owns the most popular search engine and various other useful products.

Some of the biggest tech giants have made a number of major acquisitions, such as Facebook purchasing WhatsApp and Instagram and Oculus VR, which created the first virtual reality headset. They also seek to dominate in certain areas of technology, such as with their cloud computing. Google, for example, acquired Mandiant to better protect its own cloud infrastructure.

The unemployment rate is an important measure of the health of a country’s labor market. However, many people are confused about what exactly it measures and how it’s calculated. This article explains the different measurements of joblessness used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and why they may not paint the same picture as the official unemployment rate that is widely quoted.

The basic definition of the unemployment rate is the percentage of the population who does not have a job and who is actively looking for one. This is commonly referred to as the “official” unemployment rate, which is reported each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). There has been a lot of debate over whether or not the official unemployment rate adequately captures all of the jobless in the country. In particular, many pundits and President Trump have argued that the official unemployment rate undercounts those who are truly unemployed.

The BLS uses a monthly survey of households to determine the unemployment rate. The survey includes both working and non-working household members age 16 or over. Those who are not working but who want jobs and have looked for work in the past four weeks are considered unemployed. There are six different unemployment rates that the BLS publishes to take into account various degrees of unemployment. These include U-3, which is the official unemployment rate; U-4, which includes discouraged workers; and U-5, which adds those who are marginally attached to the labor force and those who would like a job but have given up searching.