APS Employment Data 31 December 2024

This release of the Australian Public Service (APS) employment data presents a statistical outline of the APS workforce employed under the Public Service Act 1999. It provides key workforce metrics as at 31 December 2024 along with trend data. A full set of data tables are available in an Excel workbook that can be downloaded here.

This data release complements the Australian Public Service Commissioner’s annual State of the Service Report, which draws on a range of information sources including the biannual June data release. 

This current APS employment data release covers 101 agencies. Any agencies without APS staff as at 31 December 2024 are excluded from reporting.

The Australian Public Service Employment Database

Each year a ‘snapshot’ of data covering all APS employees as at 30 June and 31 December is released by the Australian Public Service Commission. The data is provided by agencies and is drawn from the Australian Public Service Employment Database. 

APS employment data includes: 

• Demographic variables including age, gender and work location
• Classification level of APS employees, from trainee to Senior Executive Service
• Diversity data including voluntary items self-reported by APS staff such as disability status, Indigenous status, and cultural diversity
• Staff movements including engagements, separations, promotions and transfers between agencies.

From the 30 June 2024 date release, the non-English Speaking Background (NESB) previously published in the APS Employment Data release has been replaced to align with the APS Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Employment Strategy and Action Plan (the CALD Strategy).

While there is no single CALD metric, the CALD Strategy has identified a measure for the purposes of benchmarking and target setting. This measure is the proportion of employees whose first language was not exclusively English. This measure will be labelled as CALD in the APS Employment Data tables to support monitoring towards targets set in the CALD Strategy. This measure is not intended as the singular measure of CALD for wider purposes; agencies should use a broad range of metrics and data sources to identify their CALD workforce. Further information on measuring CALD can be found in the CALD Strategy.

The reported size of the APS workforce is a headcount of all people employed at the time of the snapshot. This figure does not adjust for hours worked and it includes any employees who are on extended leave (for 3 months or more), including those on maternity leave and leave without pay. 

Headcount is different to Average Staffing Level (ASL) data provided in the Federal Budget papers. The ASL counts staff for the time they work. For example, a full time employee is counted as one ASL, while a part time employee who works three full days per week contributes 0.6 of an ASL. The ASL averages staffing over an annual period. It is not a point in time calculation.

Another measure of employee numbers used by both private and public sector organisations is Full Time Equivalent (FTE). This is a count of all hours worked at a point in time and then converted to the number of full time staff. For example, two staff each working three days per week would be counted as 1.2 FTE.

For further details on the APS employment database, including its scope, see the Australian Public Service Commission’s APSED webpage.

Interactive data—APSEDii

APSED data is also available via a series of interactive dashboards called the APSED interactive interface (APSEDii). 

You can access current APSEDii workforce data dashboards here, which include trend data. 

I can’t find the data I require? 

If the data you require cannot be obtained from the APS Data Release or APSEDii, you may apply to have a tailored request done by filling out our data request form noting that this is subject to resourcing and other considerations. 

Feedback

The APSC is committed to providing readers with the information they require in the most useful format, and feedback is welcome. Please e-mail APSED@apsc.gov.au if you would like to provide any comments.