Australian Social Trends
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has published these latest statistics which provide a guide to many aspects of life in Australia.
Highlights included information on older people in the labour market and data showing that overseas travel by Australians has grown more than 150% over the last 20 years, and more than half a million New Zealand-born people now live in Australia.
Just over one-third of all people aged 55 years and over (or 1.9 million people) were in the labour force in 2009–10, with this participation rate increasing strongly over the past decade.
Older men’s participation (42%) is higher than for older women’s (27%), but women’s has been growing faster, driven by both full time and part time work.
Older men were twice as likely to be self employed than younger men. Older women were most often in clerical, administrative and professional occupations. One in 10 women worked in labouring jobs such as cleaners and laundry workers.
There was a record 6.8 million short-term departures by Australians in 2009–10, equivalent to 31 overseas trips for every 100 Australians. Over half of all travel was in the Asia-Pacific region, with the most popular destinations being New Zealand (over one million trips) and Indonesia (653,000).
The fastest growing destinations were also in the Asia Pacific region with the numbers going to Thailand, China, and Fiji, each growing by over 10% per year on average, over the last decade.
