6224.0.55.001 - Labour Force, Australia: Labour Force Status and Other Characteristics of Families, June 2015 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 29/08/2016   
   Page tools: Print Print Page Print all pages in this productPrint All

COUPLE FAMILIES

As noted in What is a Family?, couple families are based around a couple relationship between two people who are either married or in a de facto partnership and usually resident in the same household. It includes couples with or without dependants, and same-sex partners.

In June 2015, there were:

  • 2.5 million opposite sex couple families with dependants (up from 2.4 million in 2012)
  • 3 million opposite sex couple families without dependants (up from 2.9 million in 2012)
  • 48,000 same-sex couple families (up from 39,400 in 2012). (Table 1)


Graph Image for COUPLE FAMILIES, Employment status-By age of youngest child, 2015

Annotation(s): *Couple families without dependants, but with children 15 years or over

Footnote(s): Does not include persons with undetermined labour force status.

Source(s): COUPLE FAMILIES, Employment status-By age of youngest child, 2015-6224_0_JUNE_2015_GRAPH_2



COUPLE FAMILIES WITH DEPENDANTS

The proportion of couple families with dependants in which one or both parents were employed was 94% in June 2015. The majority of couple families with dependants had both parents employed (64%), of which 1.3 million had at least one child aged less than 15 years. (Tables 1, 3)

There were 452,500 couple families which had youngest dependent aged 15–24 years living with them. (Table 8)

In 2015, the mother was employed in 60% of all couple families with dependants. The percentage of mothers employed full-time in couple families increased with the age of the youngest dependant, from 23% for mothers of 0–4 year olds to 44% of mothers of dependants aged 15–24 years. In 46% of couple families with dependants, the mother was employed part-time. (Table 7)



Graph Image for PERCENTAGE OF MOTHERS IN COUPLE FAMILIES, Employed full-time-By age of youngest dependant

COUPLE FAMILIES WITHOUT DEPENDANTS

In June 2015, 55% of couple families had no dependants; of these, 3.0 million were opposite sex couples, while 41,800 were same sex couples. (Table 1)