20% of families have no one working, says data

The BLS has been tracking data on employment in families since 1995.
That year, 18.8% of families had no one working.
The highest percentage was in 2011 when it hit 20.2%
It's hung at 20% in both 2012 and 2013.
So we cannot blame just Bush or Obama.

New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor shows that a whopping 20% of American households have not one person working.  That means that 1 in 5 households are living off the government.

The Bureau defines a family as follows:

Families are classified either as married-couple families or as families maintained by women or men without spouses present. Unless otherwise noted, families include those without children as well as those with children under age 18

About 1 in 5 American families have no one working,
the trend has been consistent since 1995

The report showed that in 2013 there were 80,445,000 families in the U.S. and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent--no one had a job.

I supposed if you define economic success by how many families are on the government dole, then this is remarkable.

However, if you define success, as most people do, by how many families are self sufficient, then this is a stunning sign of the abject failure of the American economic system.

Something we are doing is abjectly wrong.