The 2017 Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey has revealed the increasing use of, and spending on, paid childcare.
The key data is found in the below tables.
Regarding the use of childcare, you can see that couple parents have experienced the biggest increase since 2002, with single parents experiencing a smaller rise in use:
However, the mean weekly hours of paid childcare has increased most for single parents:
Expenditure on child care has rocketed, increasing by 74.5% in real terms for couple families and by 104.3% for single parent families:
You can also see how the proportion of media household income spent on childcare has increased most for lower-income households since 2002, with these households also spending a larger share of their incomes on childcare.
This is yet another indicator of cost-of-living pressures.
