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A jobless family is a family where no usually resident 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. The small number of 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 2017, there were 1.4 million jobless families, representing 21% of all families. The majority of these families (1.1 million) did not have dependants, many of which would include older people who have retired. There were around 339,000 jobless families with dependants, accounting for 11% of all families with dependants; this has remained stable in recent years. In 2017, an estimated 576,900 children aged 0-14 years were living in jobless families. (Datacubes 1, 4)

JOBLESS COUPLE FAMILIES WITH DEPENDANTS

In June 2017, 128,100 couple families with dependants (including children under 15 and dependent students aged 15–24 years) were jobless. Of these, 106,700 (83%) had children under 15, which equated to there being an estimated 219,100 children aged 0–14 years in jobless couple families. (Datacube 4)

JOBLESS ONE PARENT FAMILIES WITH DEPENDANTS In June 2017, there were 210,900 jobless one parent families with dependants (over one third (35%) of all one parent families with dependants). Of these, 192,000 (91%) had children under 15, which equated to an estimated 357,800 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_2017_GRAPH_7

Source(s): NUMBER OF CHILDREN, Aged 0-14 years-In jobless families-6224_0_JUNE_2017_GRAPH_8 JOBLESS FAMILIES WITHOUT DEPENDANTS In 2017, there were 1.1 million jobless families without dependants, which represented 30% of all families without dependants. Of all jobless families without dependants, 1 million (91%) were couple families, while 95,100 (9%) were one parent families. (Datacubes 1, 4)