Statistical overview of the Australian Public Service

Please note: This document is for reference purposes only and is no longer considered by the APS Commission to be current. It may contain good practice advice and/or advice on the transitional arrangements between the 1922 and 1999 Public Service Acts.

The source for all data is the Australian Public Service Statistical Bulletin, published annually by the Department of Finance, and Australian Bureau of Statistics catalogue no. 6248.0, Employed Wage and Salary Earners Australia, which is published quarterly.

As at June 1995 there were 137,150 paid staff employed in the Australian Public Service (APS) under the terms and conditions of the Public Service Act. They represented:

37.7% of total Commonwealth employment;
8.7% of employed wage and salary earners in the public sector; and
2.3% of total Australian employed wage and salary earners.

APS staff are predominantly permanent and full-time. As at June 1995, total staff (including the 9,015 non-paid permanent staff, who may be on unpaid leave, or on secondment to non-APS agencies) numbered 146,165 and the percentages of total staff in the various categories of employment were as follows (allowing for rounding):

Category	No.	%
Permanent full-time	126 580	86.6
Temporary full-time	14 747	10.1
Permanent part-time	3 438	2.4
Temporary part-time	1 400	1.0

The six largest APS agencies and departments account for nearly two-thirds of APS staff, as shown by these figures for June 1995:

Agency	No. of paid staff	% of APS paid staff
Social Security	20 033	14.6
Defence	19 740	14.4
Australian Taxation Office	17 752	12.9
Employment, Education Training and Youth Affairs	14 819	10.8
Administrative Services	7 541	5.5
Health and Family Services	6 714	4.9
Sub-total	86 599	63.1

The size of the APS is declining. The numbers of total staff (paid and unpaid) and paid staff in the APS for the period June 1991 to June 1995 are as follows:

Year	Total APS staff	APS paid staff
June 1991	163 220	151 900
June 1992	164 332	154 268
June 1993	166 062	157 526
June 1994	160 513	151 302
June 1995	146 165	137 150

In part this reflects changes in the coverage of the staff employed in the APS under the Public Service Act. For example staff of the ACT Government, SBS and the Repatriation Hospitals have all moved from coverage in the last few years.

APS staff are spread throughout Australia and overseas. As at June 1995, the pay centre locations of permanent staff were:

State/Territory	No. of staff	% of permanent APS staff
ACT	40 824	31.4
NSW	29 184	22.4
Victoria	23 947	22.4
Queensland	14 024	10.8
South Australia	8 677	6.7
Western Australia	7 552	5.8
Tasmania	2 786	2.1
Northern Territory	1 882	1.4
Overseas	1 142	0.9

Because of the increasing centralisation of pay centre functions with electronic banking facilities, this is no longer an accurate reflection of actual work location, but still serves as a useful indicator.

There has been a steady fall in the number of appointments of permanent officers to the APS in recent years, while numbers of permanent staff leaving the APS have been rising since 1992.

Since 1990-91 separations of permanent officers have averaged almost 9,000 annually. However 'natural' attrition now represents a much lower proportion of this number than in the past. In 1991-92 there were 6,989 separations of which 4,792 or 68.6% were attributable to resignation, age retirement or death. By contrast in 1994-95 there were 11,467 separations of which only 5,338 or 46.6% were 'natural': almost half were due to retrenchment, as shown in the following table.

	Year ending June
Turnover	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995
Appointments	13 595	9 621	8 932	8 945	6 787
Separations	9 450	6 989	7 967	9 094	11 467
% retrenched	16.2	22.7	33.3	29.0	48.9
% resigned	59.7	51.5	43.0	43.9	37.5
% age retired	11.7	15.3	14.0	10.6	8.1
% mobility provisions	8.8	4.6	4.2	10.2	0.7

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Statistical overview of the Australian Public Service