The Real Unemployment Rate: In 20% Of American Families, Everyone Is Unemployed -- Submitted by Michael Snyder of The American Dream blog, Posted at Zero Hedge

According to shocking new numbers that were just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of American families do not have a single person that is working.  So when someone tries to tell you that the unemployment rate in the United States is about 7 percent, you should just laugh.  One-fifth of the families in the entire country do not have a single member with a job.  That is absolutely astonishing.  How can a family survive if nobody is making any money?  Well, the answer to that question is actually quite easy.  There is a reason why government dependence has reached epidemic levels in the United States.  Without enough jobs, tens of millions of additional Americans have been forced to reach out to the government for help.  At this point, if you can believe it, the number of Americans getting money or benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million.

When I was growing up, it seemed like anyone that was willing to work hard could find a good paying job.  But now that has all changed.  At this point, 20 percent of all the families in the entire country do not have a single member that has a job.  That includes fathers, mothers and children.  The following is how CNSNews.com broke down the numbers…

A family, as defined by the BLS, is a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent–no one had a job.

To be honest, these really are Great Depression-type numbers.  But over the years “unemployment” has been redefined so many times that it doesn’t mean the same thing that it once did.  The government tells us that the official unemployment rate is about 7 percent, but that number is almost meaningless at this point.

A number that I find much more useful is the employment-population ratio.  According to the employment-population ratio, the percentage of working age Americans that actually have a job has been below 59 percent for more than four years in a row…

That means that more than 41 percent of all working age Americans do not have a job. (Click link below to read more)
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