More than one in 10 families with dependents have been jobless since June 2011, national official data show.

Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics today revealed that 10.5 per cent of the 2.9 million families with dependants living in Australia were jobless in June this year.

The ABS reported there were 96,000 jobless couple families with dependants, making up 1 in every 24 couple families with dependants. In families where either or both partners were actively looking for work, almost 1 in 3 had been trying to find work for more than a year.

There were also 210,000 single parent families with dependants that were jobless, about one third of all single parent families with dependants. Of those looking for work, 23 per cent had been jobless for more than a year. A large majority (90 per cent) were headed by single mothers.

There were 530,000 children younger than 15 living in jobless families.

The proportion of couple families with dependants in which one or both partners were employed was 94 per cent in June 2011, reported the ABS. In opposite-sex couple families, 90 per cent had fathers that were employed and 67 per cent had mothers that were employed.