The Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) has released APS employment data, presenting a statistical outline of the APS workforce, covering 98 Agencies.
Releasing the information, APSC said the APS Employment Data provided key workforce metrics for the Service as at 31 December 2020 and trends from 2001.
“At 31 December 2020, there were 148,736 employees in the Australian Public Service (APS),” the APSC said.
“This was an increase of 4,188 employees (2.9 per cent) from the same time in 2019,” it said.
“In the first six months of 2020, there was an increase of 5,926 (4.1 per cent) APS employees, including 3,547 non-ongoing employees, when the APS was responding to the bushfire emergency and the outbreak of COVID-19.”
It said APS employee numbers had fallen by 11.1 per cent from their peak of 167,339 in June 2012.
The Commission said the data covered demographic variables including age, gender and work location; classification level of APS employees; diversity data; and staff movements.
“The average age of APS employees was 43.6 years as at 31 December 2020,” it said. “Average age has increased steadily from 40.1 years in 2001.”
APSC said the proportion of the APS population 50 years or older had also increased from 20.5 per cent in 2001 to 33.1 per cent in 2020, while the number of employees under the age of 30 declined from 18.0 per cent to 12.8 per cent over the same time.
It said the most common classification across the workforce was APS 6 with the proportion of employees at that level increasing from 18.1 per cent in 2001 to 23.0 per cent in 2020.
“In 2001, the most common classification was APS 4 (24.4 per cent) and in 2020 this classification represented only 18.0 per cent of employees,” the APSC said
“In December 2020, the number of employees at the APS 4 classification fell behind the EL 1 classification (18.5 per cent) for the first recorded time.”
The Commission said the largest number of APS employees on 31 December were located in the Australian Capital Territory (56,852), which represented 38.2 per cent of the whole workforce.
It said the three largest States by population (New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland) made up a combined list just over 46 per cent of the APS workforce.
APSC’s 42-page Data Report can be accessed at this PS News link.
