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JOBLESS FAMILIES

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 2012, there were 1.3 million jobless families - 19% of all families. Of these, 932 thousand were jobless couple families - about one in every six couple families - and 299 thousand jobless one parent families - almost one in every three one parent families.

JOBLESS FAMILIES WITH DEPENDANTS

There were 315 thousand jobless families with dependants in June 2012, comprising 11% of all families with dependants. The proportion of jobless families with dependants in June 2012 has remained stable in recent years, aside from June 2009 where it dropped to 9%, from nearly 12% in 2005.

About 92 thousand couple families with dependants had all family members 15 years or over who were jobless - which was about one in every 25 couple families with dependants. Of these 86% had their youngest dependant aged 0 – 14 years and 14% had their youngest dependant a dependent student aged 15 to 24 years.

There were 167 thousand children aged 0–14 years in jobless couple families in June 2012.

In June 2012, there were 223 thousand jobless one parent families with dependants - about one third of all one parent families with dependants. Of these families, 89% were single mother families and 72% of jobless single mothers had children under 10 years old.

The number of children aged 0–14 years in jobless one parent families was 362 thousand in June 2012.