It’s not a surprise that the slow economic recovery has been particularly hard on families. New data released last month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that 8.4 million families had at least one unemployed member, making the “family unemployment rate” 10.5 percent, well above the average national unemployment rate of 8.1 percent in 2012.

In this chart, my colleague Keith Hall and I show what I think is an even grimmer picture. In 2012, some 20 percent of families had no one working. (That number includes both the unemployed and looking for work and the jobless and not looking for work.) That group isn’t just seniors – the data show that 12.2 percent of families with children under 18 years old have no one working. That number is down from 2011, but up from any years in the previous decade.