2.5 million Australians live below the internationally accepted poverty line. Of these people 61% are unemployed and 33% are working poor (not earning enough income through their jobs).

Other key findings of the report, Poverty in Australia, 2014, by the Australian Council of Social Service (quoting p.10):

• Women are significantly more likely to experience poverty than men, with 14.7% of women compared with 13% of all men experiencing poverty in 2011-12.
• Compared with other age groups, children and older people face higher risks of poverty (17.7% and 14.8% respectively), reflecting the higher costs facing families with children and the fact that many older people receiving the Age Pension do not have sufficient additional income to place them above the poverty line.
• Sole parents are at a particularly high risk of poverty, with a third (33%) of sole parents in
  poverty in 2012. As a consequence just over a third (36.8%) of all children in poverty were
  in sole parent households. This reflects the lower rates of employment among sole parent households, especially those with very young children, and low levels of social security payments for these families.
• Poverty is higher amongst adults born in countries where the main language is not English (18.8%) than amongst those born overseas in an English speaking country (11.4%), or in Australia (11.6%).
• The rate of poverty is higher amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (19.3%,
  compared with 12.4% of the total Australian population, based on based on 2011 HILDA3
  data).
• People with a disability face a significantly higher risk of poverty than the average. In 2009 this was 27.4% compared with 12.8% for the total population, and this does not take account of the additional costs relating to disability (for housing, transport and medical services) borne by many people with a disability.