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DIVERSITY TRENDS

Workplace diversity makes a major contribution to capability in the APS, as well as being important to equity in employment. Diversity data is monitored for employment-related disadvantage on the basis of sex, race and ethnicity, Indigenous status or disability. Apart from sex, staff in these categories have the option of identifying themselves as belonging to these groups by reporting their status to their agency’s human resources area. It is important that agencies give staff the opportunity to update their personal information, as well as then providing that data to the APS Commission.

At June 2004, women represented 53.8% of total staff. This was a very slight increase from the previous year.³

Figure 2.2: Trends in diversity for ongoing staff, 1995 to 2004

Source: APSED

Figure 2.2 shows changes in the proportion of ongoing staff in the other EEO groups in the past 10 years. During 2003—04, the number of people with a disability rose marginally, but their proportional representation remained at 3.8%. For people from a non-English speaking background (NESB1),⁴ there was growth in both actual and proportional representation (up from 3.2% at June 2003 to 3.3% at June 2004). For Indigenous Australians, however, the trend was down both in number and as a percentage of ongoing staff (down from 2.4% to 2.3%), confirming the concern expressed in last year’s report about the stalling of growth in Indigenous employment. A detailed analysis of diversity in the APS can be found in Chapter 8.

3 The increase was from 53.75% to 53.78%, and when rounded to one decimal place there is no change.

4 In the absence of alternative measures, the concept ‘NESB’, representing people from a non-English speaking background, is used with APSED. This captures information about first language spoken, place of birth and parental heritage. NESB1, the measure used here, includes people born overseas whose first language was not English. NESB2 has previously been reported in addition to NESB1 and includes children of migrants, including those who were born overseas and arrived in Australia before the age of five and did not speak English as a first language, those who were Australian born but did not speak English as a first language and had at least one NESB1 parent, and those who were Australian born and had neither parent speaking English as a first language. Analysis of APSED data has found that this group does not have a substantial disadvantage compared to other workers, and is therefore not reported here.