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A jobless family is a family where no persons in the family aged 15 years and over are employed (this includes dependants). In a jobless family, all of the family members are either unemployed and/or not in the labour force. Families that have no employed members but do have members that are "not determined in the scope of the labour force survey," such as having a family member who is a member of the permanent Australian defence force, are not included in the number of jobless families however they are included in the total number of families.

In June 2015, there were 1.4 million jobless families, representing 21% of all families. Of these, around 1.0 million were jobless families without dependants and 329,200 had dependants. (Tables 1, 4)

There were 329,200 jobless families with dependants in June 2015, which represented 11% of all families with dependants. The proportion of jobless families with dependants has remained stable in recent years. (Table 4) COUPLE FAMILIES WITH DEPENDANTS In June 2015, 123,000 couple families with dependants (including children under 15) were jobless. Of these, 111,900 (91%) had children under 15 (an increase from 88% in 2012). There were 217,100 children aged 0–14 years in jobless couple families in June 2015; this represented an increase from 191,400 in 2012 (the biggest increase took place between 2012 and 2013) and the remainder had a dependent student aged 15–24 years. (Table 4) Source(s): JOBLESS COUPLE FAMILIES, With dependents-As percentage of all couple families with dependants-6224_0_JUNE_2015_GRAPH_6 ONE PARENT FAMILIES WITH DEPENDANTS In June 2015, there were 206,300 jobless one parent families with dependants (one third of all one parent families with dependants). Of these, 185,900 (90%) had children under 15. The number of children aged 0–14 years in jobless one parent families dropped from 366,300 to 348,900 between June 2012 and June 2015. (Table 4) Source(s): JOBLESS ONE PARENT FAMILIES, With dependants-As percentage of all one parent families with dependants-6224_0_JUNE_2015_GRAPH_7

JOBLESS FAMILIES WITHOUT DEPENDANTS In 2015, there were 1.0 million jobless families without dependants, which represented 29% of all families without dependants. Of all jobless families without dependants, 937,400 (91%) were couple families, while 96,600 (9%) were one parent families. (Tables 1, 4)