SAME-sex couples are more likely to share the cooking, cleaning, gardening and home repairs than heterosexual couples, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed today.

Its Census data shows that 59 per cent of lesbian couples and 57 per cent of male couples divide the domestic duties - compared to just 38 per cent of traditional couples.

Gay couples also earn more, are better educated and are more likely to work than male-female couples.

The latest 2011 Census data shows that same-sex couples are nearly twice as likely to have a university degree.

More than half the people in same-sex couples work as managers or professionals, compared to 40 per cent in opposite-sex couples.

Gay men are most likely to work in retail, advertising or public relations, or as nurses and hairdressers.

Social Trends: Gay couples in Australia

Men with female partners are most likely to work as truck drivers, retail managers, tradesmen or accountants.

Popular jobs for lesbian couples are as nurses, teachers, police, welfare workers or in retail.

Women with male partners tend to work as clerks, teachers, receptionists and office managers and in childcare.

Same sex couples are twice as likely to have both partners earning more than $1000 per week.

The top 10 suburbs for gay couples are all in inner Sydney, with male couples comprising one in six of all couples living in Darlinghurst, Potts Point, Surry Hills and Elizabeth Bay.

In Victoria, female same-sex couples make up 4.5 per cent of all couples in Daylesford-Hepburn Springs.

And in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, 1.2 per cent of all couples are lesbian.

The Census data shows Australia has 33,700 same-sex couples, with 6300 children living in same-sex families.

Nearly half the same-sex couples have no religion, but 18 per cent are Catholic, 13 per cent Anglican and 4 per cent Buddhist.

Gay women were most likely to cite their religion as "spiritualist'' or "nature'', with 2 per cent supporting Paganism or Wiccan.

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