Appendix 3: Workforce trends

This appendix summarises some overall trends in the APS for 2020–21, and over the past 10 years. The primary source of data is the APS Employment Database (APSED).

While this appendix briefly summarises APS workforce trends, the June 2021 APS employment data release provides detailed data. Each published report provides current and previous years’ data. Historical records can be adjusted at this time to pick up information that affects previously reported data. For this reason, the current publication is always the most accurate data source for APS employment data, including for historical data.

APS Employment trends

As at 30 June 2021, there were 153,945 employees in the APS, comprising:

133,952 ongoing employees, up by 1.3% from 132,222 ongoing employees in June 2020

• 19,993 non-ongoing employees, up by 9.9% from 18,195 non-ongoing employees in June 2020.

During 2020–21:

• 10,157 ongoing employees were engaged, up by 3.5% from 9,811 ongoing engagements in 2019–20 
• 8,430 ongoing employees separated from the APS, down by 14.4% from 9,848 separations of ongoing employees in 2019–20.

Source: APSED

Job families

The APS Job Family Model groups functionally similar jobs that perform related tasks and require similar or related skills and knowledge. The model classifies jobs at 3 levels: family, function and role. There are 19 job families, which are broken down into clusters of job functions and further into job roles.

As at 30 June 2021, 35 agencies supplied job family data relating to 130,799 (85.0%) of APS employees.

Location

Figure A3.2 presents the dispersion of job families across Canberra, other cities and regions across Australia.

Figure A3.2: Job families, by location (30 June 2021)

Engagement and separations

Engagement numbers have fluctuated over the last 10 years, ranging from 11,271 in 2011–12, to 2,367 in 2014–15 during the APS-wide recruitment freeze, and then back up to 10,157 in 2020–21.

Tables A3.3 and A3.4 cover ongoing APS engagements by classification and by age group.

Source: APSED

Table A3.5 covers ongoing APS separations by classification. In 2020–21 there were 8,430 ongoing separations. The number of separations decreased from 9,848 in 2019–20. Unlike engagements, separations have remained relatively steady over time.

 Source: APSED

Classification structures

As at 30 June 2021, the most commonly engaged classification was at the APS 6 level. This continues the trend of the last decade since APS 6 became the most common classification in 2011 (Table A3.6).

 Age profile

As at 30 June 2021, the average age of APS employees remained steady at 43.5, with most APS employees still aged between 35 and 54 (Table A3.7).

Source: APSED

Gender

The gender profile of the APS has been skewed towards women since 1999, when they became the majority of employees. However, in the last 10 years the proportion of women has grown from 57.7% to 60.2% (Table A3.8).

 Source: APSED

For the first time, the proportion of women at EL2 and SES Band 1 levels are higher than that of men. There remains a lower proportion of women at SES Band 2 and 3 levels compared to men. However, the numbers at these levels continue to rise (Table A3.9).

Source: APSED

 Table A3.10 presents the proportion of APS employees belonging to each diversity group.

Table A3.10: Proportion of APS employees by diversity group (2012 to 2021)

Source: APSED