Around 70% - 80% of autistic people are unemployed

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The statistic that 70% - 80% of autistic people are unemployed, does that mean they do not undertake any employment which includes voluntary work ?

The reliability of these claims are dubious, because the percentage of undiagnosed autistic people cannot be known.

True but it is a very high number .
It is a guess .
I am saying does unemployment mean not undertaking paid employment ?

I would guess that government officials would focus on paid employment, or self-employment. Although everyone pays taxes one way or another, working or not, governments tend to define "tax payers" as people with income sources that can be identified and taxed....

The actual number isn't important as it is much higher than the unemployment numbers for other groups of people.

According to recent national surveys in the United States, around 56% of people with Down syndrome are employed, with most holding part-time jobs, and only a small percentage working full-time

In general unemployment statistics focus on the percent of people not doing paid work at a current point. Volunteer work does not count as employment. Plenty of unemployed people including autistics have worked some but do not keep working at their jobs for various reasons & thus are considered unemployed due to them not currently performing paid work.

I know two people who weren't able to do volunteer work.
One would bite others when she was upset. Not acceptable.
The other needed a service dog.

I would say that a much higher percentage of people who are either diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, or would have been had they been diagnosed back when that diagnosis was in use, are employed, although many of those are arguably underemployed or struggle in their work situation.

Unemployed I think does usually refer to working in return for at least some compensation.

We are either unemployed, or UNDERemployed, as in we don't earn as much as our NT peers.

Thought to add that just because there may be a high rate of unemployment with us autistics that does not automatically mean that a high percent of us are not able to have jobs. Some of us struggle to find employment like our first job after getting out of school or finding employment in general but can keep our jobs for a while once we get them. Some of us have periods where we are in between jobs for various reasons but are able to go back to work after a while. Also it's not uncommon for autistics to have comoribid disabilities or disabilities unrelated to our autism. I think the autistics who get officially & unofficially diagnosed are the ones more likely to have other disabilities.

When the US government gives unemployment statistics they they try to pretend that the percent is lower by giving the numbers of people collecting unemployment. That's usually people who worked for a wage/salary & then lost their jobs or got temporarily laid off. The government unemployment figures tend to exclude people who never worked, people collecting disability type benefits, & long-term homemakers.