Home
› Statistical snapshot
› Size of the APS › Diversity trends › Ongoing and non-ongoing employees › Part-time employees › Classification structures › Mobility within the APS › Age profile › Length of service
Length of service
As at June 2005, the median length of service9 for ongoing employees was nine years. Men have a median length of service of eleven years, compared with seven for women. Figure 2.14 shows the profile of length of service over the 10 years to June 2005. As a proportion of total ongoing employees, the number of those with fewer than five years service has risen from less than one quarter in 1998 (23.0%) to almost one-third at June 2005 (32.7%). This rise reflects the increase in engagements over this period—in the past five years there have been 61,895 ongoing engagements, compared with 39,916 in the five years before that.
A substantial proportion of those engaged this year had previously worked in the APS. Further details can be found in the ‘Prior service’ section below.
Figure 2.14: Ongoing employees—length of service, 1996 to 2005
Source: APSED
9 Length of service has been calculated differently this year. In past years, only length of service on an employee’s current Australian Government Service (AGS) number has been used. Due to improvements in data quality, from this year length of service will be calculated based on an employee’s complete history (including service as a non-ongoing employee since 1999); for example, an employee who had five years of service, left the APS for two years and then returned for seven years would have a total length of service of 12 years. Previously, this employee would have been recorded as having seven years of service. The impact of this will be an overall increase in length of service, but the data will more accurately represent the relevant APS experience of employees.
