Chapter 2: Statistical snapshot

Abbreviations

A list of the abbreviations used in this report is available in the Glossary

Diversity trends

Workplace diversity makes a major contribution to capability in the APS, as well as being important to equity in employment. Trends in diversity in terms of sex, race and ethnicity, Indigenous status or having a disability, are particularly relevant to monitoring employment-related disadvantage. Information on the representation of EEO groups in the APS comes from individual agencies and is stored on APSED. The provision of EEO data by APS employees to their agency is voluntary (with the exception of sex). It is important that employees are given the opportunity to update their personal information, and that agencies then provide that data to the Commission. This issue is discussed further in Chapter 5.

Women’s representation in the APS continues to grow. At June 2006, women’s representation in the APS was 55.8%, up from 54.2% at June 2005.This increase of 1.6 percentage points was the largest since 1989–90. More than half of this growth relates to Medicare Australia. However, if Medicare Australia had not moved into coverage, women’s representation would still have increased to 54.8%— an increase of 0.6 percentage points.

As outlined earlier in this chapter, women’s representation continued to grow at all classification levels, particularly at EL and SES classifications.

Figure 2.12 shows changes in the proportion of ongoing employees in the equal employment opportunity groups other than women over the past ten years.

Figure 2.12: Trends in diversity for ongoing employees, 1997 to 2006

Source: APSED

For non-English speaking background (NESB1) employees, there was growth in both actual and proportional representation over the year to June 2006 (up from 5.4% in 2005 to 5.6% in 2006). However, the decline in employment for Indigenous Australians and people with disability has continued. The proportion of Indigenous Australians fell to 2.0%,down from 2.2% the previous year. Representation of people with disability fell more sharply, from 3.8% in 2005 to 3.4%. Both these groups declined in actual numbers as well as proportionally, despite strong growth in overall employee numbers. Some of this decline is likely to reflect the change in coverage of the Public Service Act in 2005–06, but the declines also reflect the systemic change in the nature of skill requirements in the APS. A detailed analysis of diversity in the APS, including the impact of Medicare Australia moving into coverage of the Act, can be found in Chapter 5.

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 parents’ language. NESB1, the measure reported 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 neither of whose parents spoke 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 it is therefore, not reported on here.