The national unemployment rate rose a 0.1 point in December, to 4.7%, the Labor Department announced Friday. That's a slight increase, but relying on that one headline number as an indicator of the economy's general direction ignores important information just below the surface.

Every month on "Jobs Friday," the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases a slew of data, each of which provides its own perspective on the nation's employment situation. Economists look past the official unemployment rate - that 4.7% figure, also referred to as “U3” - to other metrics that give their own nuanced view of the jobs in the country.

One of those figures, the U-6 rate, has a broader definition of unemployment and, in December, that number fell 0.1 point, to 9.2%. The U-6 rate is defined as all unemployed, plus "persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the labor force." In other words: The unemployed, the underemployed and the discouraged.

The U-3 rate, which only measures people who are actively looking for work, has in the past few months returned to the prerecession levels that economists consider full employment. The U-6 has seen significant gains in recent months but remains higher than before the recession - the last time the U-6 was below 9.2% was March 2008.