How inflation hits working families

The Federal government admits that the nation’s pensioners are “doing it tough”, but new figures show it is ordinary Australian families that suffer most from inflation.

The figures, produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, track the financial fate of various family types.

They show that the costs faced by “employee families” rose by 5.7 per cent over the past year.

That is well above the nation’s overall inflation rate of 4.5 per cent.

These families were hit hardest, because they use more fuel and have bigger mortgages than, say, pensioners.

The costs, met by pensioners, rose by just 4.3 per cent over the year.

But, as the government acknowledges, pensioners aren’t having it easy, either.

Food, for example, takes a 21 per cent bite out of the typical pensioner’s income.

The food bills, for working families, add up to just 16.4 per cent of income.

That is slightly lower than the 16.8 per cent of income that self funded retirees spend on food.

Australia’s pensioners, overall, spend 5.1 per cent of their income on clothes and shoes.

But, even that, is slightly higher than the 4.3 per cent that working families spend on the same items.