Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

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AUSTRALIAN FAMILIES

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AUSTRALIAN FAMILIES

In June 2011, there were an estimated 6.4 million families living in Australia with a total of 19 million family members. An estimated 3.4 million people were not living with family and of those 60% lived alone.

The vast majority of families were couple families (84%). About 2 in every 5 couple families had dependants living with them (43%).

The next largest group were lone parent families (15%) and 2 out of every 3 lone parent families had dependants living with them (67%). Of the 950 thousand lone parent families, 83% were single mothers.

Of all families, 80% had at least one employed family member aged 15 years and over. Some 7% of families had one or more members unemployed. Just under half of all families had a member who was not in the labour force, while in 17% of all families every member was not in the labour force (for example, retired couples).