more people are reporting themselves as self-employed, which would be more accurately labeled, "I'm still desperately looking for work, but I can't put on my resume that I haven't had a job since 2007."

I can testify to the accuracy of that observation.
Although I did actually get some work as a freelancer (and indeed by then end quite a lot), I sure never felt that it would be prudent to be quite too candid about exactly how much. But mostly, I have a friend who was "self-employed" in this way for two years.

So he did an MBA, which he got with distinction. The result: well, at least he gets initial interviews with 25 years old junior HR staff, who seem to convey the following messages:
-I don't understand what you do / can do for a living, that's way beyond my level of experience.
-How can you be over 40 and be looking for work?
-What do you mean you had twins and eased on your workload for a while? Can't you understand what your priorities should be? Are you retarded?

Or so he explained to me. The job market must be really tough for outsiders if this guys has any difficulty at all.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

Even relatively well off people seem to understand how much unemployment there really is and how "wage-growth" is just an unachievable fantasy for most people. Even if they themselves do not experience it, their children or their children's friends or their relations do. Real people have connections across the country and across population groups.

For Westminster and the media, they are so busy, so preoccupied with their own peer group, that they seem unable to understand or articulate how reality short-circuits all these mad grand schemes for getting the economy going.

That's why Paul Mason seems so extra-ordinary, he's the only journalist going out and investigating the lived experiences of the people at the sharp end. He's the only one I read who makes any sense whatsoever.

keep to the Fen Causeway