How to make Mail Rules work on an AOL Account

Specifically it drives us nuts that there are hundreds of junk mails marked as UNREAD and I want no number next to the JUNK mail folder. Yes I know I can manually mark things as read but what are rules for if they do not work. I am told by Apple tech that as AOL cannot be made to mark the emails as unread or not I have no choice. There must be a way to just turn off the number of unread emails next to the JUNK folder on Apple MAIL. It's a computer for ?? sake.

This has been a problem for many of the OS's as far as I can remember back. I have always wondered if they would "fix" this but no joy. I have put it in a feedback/suggestions for years, again, no joy.

Some smart person here must have figured this out by now...

Thanks,

ali