Last week I wrote about same-sex couples from the social perspective.

I described how elderly same-sex couples are active volunteers, how lesbian couples are more likely to be parents than gay couples, pointed to the shocking mental health of young same-sex couples, and tried to estimate roughly what share of the population might be same-sex attracted.

Today we are exploring same-sex couples through the workforce lens. Please refer to last week’s column for the methodology and reasoning behind looking only at de facto couples rather than marriages, and why we blissfully ignore all single people. Let’s dig into the data.

On average, same-sex couples are much more educated than opposite-sex couples. An impressive 49 per cent of same-sex couples have a university degree, compared to 31 per cent of opposite-sex couples.

A look at the age profile of education shows that the education gap between same-sex and opposite-sex couples is narrowing. This suggests that in higher educated circles, homosexuality was socially acceptable sooner than in less educated circles.

Following on from this, it isn’t surprising that same-sex couples tend to work in more highly skilled jobs, as measured by the official skill level associated with each job (have a look at this previous column of mine to learn about the skill level measurement).

As same-sex couples are more educated and work in more highly skilled jobs than opposite-sex couples, they should take home juicier pay cheques, right? Indeed, they do.

I can think of two reasons why homosexual couples earn more money. First, same-sex relationships weren’t as socially acceptable a few decades ago as they are now. This artificially drove down the number of same-sex relationships, especially in lower-skilled jobs.

The higher up the income scale you moved, the more acceptable same-sex relationships were. Therefore, we skewed our data by excluding lower-skilled (and lower paid) same-sex income earners.

The closed pay gap in the 20-30 cohort suggests pretty amazing social progress. Secondly, same-sex couples are much less likely to have kids. This means they less frequently take career breaks to care for kids. No primary carer penalty for same-sex couples, so to speak.

A quick glance at employment by industry data shows that same-sex couples tend to cluster in certain types of jobs and navigate away from other jobs. Media and finance employ same-sex couples at five times the rate of construction.

Diving deeper into the industry of employment data, we learn that on a sub-industry level same-sex couples are very strongly represented. In the performing arts, same-sex couples make up a share of 15 per cent – that’s three times higher than the overall share of the workforce.

On the other end of the spectrum are nine sub-industries (from beekeeping to sewage services) that don’t feature a single member of a same-sex couple.

The strongest clustering of same-sex couples does, however, not occur on an industry level but on an occupation level. There are a few jobs that are dominated by same-sex couples. We are examining only jobs with at least 100 workers in the sample.

The job that has the highest clustering of same-sex couples is flight attendant. Over 22 per cent of all flight attendants in a de facto relationship are in a same-sex relationship.

When we split the data by gender, we learn that female flight attendants make up 75 per cent of all flight attendants. Only 1.9 per cent of female flight attendants are in a same-sex relationship, while an astonishing 83 per cent of all male flight attendants are in a same-sex relationship.

That extreme clustering of gay men in this single occupation must be seen in the context of historical discrimination. It just made sense for a hidden minority to move into a job that allowed frequent travel to far away destinations. In a more accepting world, there is no need to hide your sexual orientation and no need to specifically seek out occupations allowing you to hide.

When we sort jobs by gender split, we realise that female workers in male-dominated jobs are more likely to be in same-sex relationships – the same is the case for male workers in female industries.

While 99 per cent of dental assistants are women, 38 per cent of the few men working the same job are in a same-sex relationship. The pattern repeats itself for personal assistants (97 per cent female, 45 per cent of men in same-sex relationship), speech pathologists (97 per cent, 34 per cent), and makeup artists (97 per cent, 100 per cent).

Among male-dominated jobs such as carpenters (99 per cent male, 41 per cent of women in same-sex relationship), plumbers (99 per cent, 23 per cent), and concreters (99 per cent male, 20 per cent), the pattern is the same.

That ends our two-part miniseries about same-sex couples in Australia.

The picture would be more complete if the Census directly asked for our sexual orientation. There are, however, reasons not to ask for something as sensitive as sexual orientation in the Census.

One could argue that sexual orientation doesn’t matter for public policy (that’s the main reason we hold a Census after all), as we treat all people the same. I think the stronger argument has to do with the way people fill out the Census form in the household and that some same-sex attracted people haven’t disclosed their sexual orientation to their own parents or wider family.

Also, from what age onwards should we ask about sexual orientation? The coyness of the Census to ask about sexual orientation suggests that despite huge social progress, as a society we still have a bit of catching up to do.

Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. Follow Simon on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn for daily data insights in short format.

This article first appeared in our sister publication The New Daily.