2012 has seen strong growth for professional social networking site LinkedIn. We took a look at the most recent statistics to get a local snapshot of LinkedIn usage in Australia.

2,799,320 LinkedIn users in Australia

There are almost three million LinkedIn users in Australia, leveraging 13.17% of the entire population, and a 16.43% penetration of the online population.

16% of social network users are on LinkedIn

The proportion of social media users in Australia that use LinkedIn has almost doubled within the past year, with usage growing from 9% to 16%.

LinkedIn users visit the site five times a week

The average number of visits to Australia's LinkedIn site has decreased from eight per week in 2011 to five per week in 2012. The average time spent on the site per visit has also fallen from 13.1 minutes in 2011 to just under nine minutes in 2012.

28% of social media users aged 40 – 49 use LinkedIn

LinkedIn is most popular among Australians in the 40 – 49 age bracket, with 28% of social media users in this demographic using LinkedIn, closely followed by 23% of social media users aged 50 – 64. The least well represented age group is the 14 – 19 demographic, with only 1% of social media users in that group on Linked In.

26% of social media users in NSW use LinkedIn

NSW has the highest proportion of social media users on LinkedIn in Australia at 26%, closely followed by 19% in Victoria. LinkedIn has the lowest penetration in South Australia and Tasmania with usage at 3% and 5% respectively.

Sources: Social Bakers, Yellow Social Media Report