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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 dependent students aged 15–24 years). 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 2016, there were 1.4 million jobless families, representing 22% of all families. Of these, around 1.1 million were jobless families without dependants and 341,500 had dependants (around 11% of all families with dependants). The proportion of jobless families with dependants has remained stable in recent years. (Datacubes 1, 4)

COUPLE FAMILIES WITH DEPENDANTS

In June 2016, 127,600 couple families with dependants (including children under 15 and dependent students aged 15–24 years) were jobless. Of these, 112,300 (88%) had children under 15, which equated to there being an estimated 220,600 children aged 0–14 years in jobless couple families; this represented an increase from 217,100 in 2015. (Datacube 4)

Source(s): JOBLESS COUPLE FAMILIES, With dependants-As percentage of all couple families with dependants-6224_0_JUNE_2016_GRAPH_6 ONE PARENT FAMILIES WITH DEPENDANTS In June 2016, there were 213,900 jobless one parent families with dependants (over one third (35%) of all one parent families with dependants). Of these, 193,600 (91%) had children under 15, which equated to an estimated 359,600 children aged 0-14 years in these families. (Datacubes 1, 4) Source(s): JOBLESS ONE PARENT FAMILIES, With dependants-As percentage of all one parent families with dependants-6224_0_JUNE_2016_GRAPH_7

Source(s): NUMBER OF CHILDREN, Aged 0-14 years-In jobless families-6224_0_JUNE_2016_GRAPH_8 JOBLESS FAMILIES WITHOUT DEPENDANTS In 2016, there were 1.1 million jobless families without dependants, which represented 31% of all families without dependants. Of all jobless families without dependants, 1 million (92%) were couple families, while 90,500 (8%) were one parent families. (Datacubes 1, 4)