There are now 7.3 million families in Australia, with more of them led by same-sex couples and single mothers than ever before, according to new data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
There are 7.3 million families in Australia as of June 2022, an increase of 1 million families in the last decade.
The majority are coupled families (84.2 per cent), while there are more than a million one-parent families (14.2 per cent) and just 117,600 “other” families led by someone other than a parent (whether that be a grandparent or adult sibling).
There are almost 3.32 million families with dependent children and 3.88 million without dependants.
Couples
Of the 6.2 million coupled families in Australia, there are just 43,400 same-sex couple families (1.7 per cent).
The number of same sex couples in Australia has more than doubled in the last decade from 40,000 to 103,000.
There are almost 118,000 families with people other than parents at the helm, whether that be grandparents or adult-age children.
One-parent families
One in seven families (14.2 per cent) consist of just one parent.
Almost 80 per cent of one-parent families are led by a single mother.
In the workforce
Almost three quarters of coupled families with dependants had both parents employed (71.4 per cent).
There were 1.4 million families who are completely unemployed (5.44 per cent) – this means everyone over the age of 15 is either unemployed, retired or not in the labour force.
It is a small decline from the 1.43 million jobless families at the same time last year.
There are 45,300 “other” families where the “family head” is not in the labour force.