The Australian Tax Office (ATO) quietly released some statistics end June. I say quietly because this data is really interesting. And useful for individual retirees keen to understand their overall financial standing.
The data is somewhat ponderously called the Individuals statistics for Taxation statistics 2022–23 and is buried in amongst a lot of other statistics on tax paid in Financial Year 2022-23. Reproduced below are the two pieces of information that matter most: a table of median super balances by age and gender and the same information represented in a chart.
I have chosen to highlight the median balances (as opposed to the average) because median amounts offer a much more useful benchmark than averages. That’s because the average super balances can’t help but be skewed higher by the 135+ people holding more than 10 million in their super account. One individual has a balance of 534 million! So using averages is just not useful. As a refresher on high school maths, a median amount represents the middle value in a set of numbers, with half (in this case, super accounts) being lower, and half being higher. So it’s the midway point and that’s what makes it such a useful yardstick.
Here are the most recent individual balances, published in late June 2025 by the ATO.