This figure, or 6% of the Australian
male population, was arrived at by Australian
demographer and
KPMG consultant
Bernard Salt in his book
The Big Picture.
His 'fella filter' takes 1.3 million Australian males aged from 25 to 34 and eliminates those who are partnered (married or de facto), gay (no explanation how this coefficient was calculated), have children from a previous union, and earn under $60,000 a year (about US$45,000, GBP25,000 or EUR37,000, which is a modest income in Sydney which one would struggle on to maintain the lifestyle a KPMG consultant).
The filter however does not eliminate from this pool the malodorous, the parentally oversupervised, the workaholics, the philanderous, the substance abusers or the terminally dorky. It also does not take into consideration other other factors that women consider when considering a mate, such as ethnicity, religion, location, education, personality or attractiveness.
Bernie even ends up identifying the professions of this highly desirable 86,000-man army: accountants, system designers, marketing managers, software designers, fitters, application programmers and other professions not commonly found in hit television series.
To make matters worse for thirty-something women there are 20,000 fewer men in this age group, naturally a consequence of men marrying younger partners, but also because he suggests Australian bachelors have chosen to extend their careers overseas. For Sydney women the gender balance is especially not in the favour - men are found in greater abundance in regional Australia. At least there sixty grand a year does not equate to penury, and the men are supposively less likely to be gay than if they were in Sydney.