Age profile

The decline in employment of young people, noted in last year’s report, has continued this year. The number of ongoing APS employees aged less than 25 years dropped to 4967 at June 2005. This was a decrease of 306 (or 5.8%) on the previous year. In absolute terms, there were decreases in all age groups under 45 years, except for the 30–34 age group, with strongest growth in the 55 and over age group.

Table 2.2 shows the proportion of employees in 10 year age groups, at June 1996, 1999, 2002 and 2005. Over the decade, the largest increase has been in the 45–54 age group, which increased by 5.3 percentage points. This age group is now almost as large in number as the 35–44 group, and will outnumber it in the next year if current trends continue. This trend has major implications for workforce planning and succession management in agencies. The 55 and over age group has grown steadily over the past decade, particularly in the past few years, rising to over 10% of all ongoing staff at June 2005.

Table 2.2: Ongoing employees—proportion by age, 1996, 1999, 2002 and 2005

Source: APSED

Figure 2.11 shows how young people’s representation in the APS has changed over the past decade. In the 20–24 age group, the improvement between 2001 and 2003 has completely reversed in the past two years, and the representation of this group is at its lowest level since regular data collection began. For the under 20 years age group, the number of employees is much smaller, and there has been little change in their representation over the decade.

Figure 2.11: Ongoing employees—representation of young people, 1996 to 2005

Source: APSED

Figure 2.12 shows that, in general, the APS has an older age profile than the Australian labour force, with a significantly lower proportion of young people, and more in the 35–54 age group: 60.8% of ongoing APS employees were aged 35–54 compared with only 45.2% of the labour force. The APS has a lower proportion in the 55 years and over age group, although the gap in the 55–59 age group has narrowed this year.

Figure 2.12: Age profile of ongoing APS employees and labour force, 2005

Source: APSED and ABS

Employees in the 45 and over age group, who will be eligible for retirement in the next 10 years, account for 40.4% of ongoing employees. In 1996, this group accounted for only 30.5% of ongoing employees.

Older workers are more likely to be in higher classifications and, in general, have longer length of service than average. The ageing of more senior ongoing employees over the past 10 years is particularly pronounced; for example, 26.2% of the SES and 17.7% of EL employees were in the 50–54 age group at June 2005, compared with 24.2% and 13.7% at June 1996.

The 55 and over age group shows a similar pattern, with the proportion of SES employees in this age group increasing from 10.7% to 17.7% over the decade. The proportion of EL employees aged 55 and over increased from 6.3% to 10.4%. Thus, 43.9% of the SES and 28.1% of EL employees could, if they wished, retire with superannuation benefits within five years.

Agencies’ age profiles vary widely. This reflects, in part, the nature of an agency’s functions and classification structures. Those agencies with a relatively high proportion of staff aged over 45 years may face more critical and different workforce planning and knowledge management issues than those with a younger age profile. Figure 2.13 shows comparative age profiles for ongoing employees in selected agencies at June 2005. The graph includes all agencies with more than 1500 ongoing employees, as well as some others with particularly young or old age profiles; for example, ANAO (14.5%), Finance (10.0%) and the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) (9.0%) all have a much higher proportion of their employees aged under 25 years than the APS average of 4.0%. Similarly, some agencies have a much older age profile, with a higher proportion of employees aged 45 years or over, for example, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) (64.1%), the Bureau of Meterology (BoM) (55.8%) and DVA (55.1%). at June 2005, 40.4% of APS employees were aged 45 years or over.

Figure 2.13: Ongoing employees in selected agencies by age group, June 2005

Source: APSED

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