The latest report on the State of the Australian Public Service (APS) has revealed that 150,474 staff members were employed at the end of the 2019-20 financial year spread across 98 Agencies in 14 portfolios and at 567 locations in Australia and around the world.
The APS Commission’s annual State of the Service Report revealed that an extra 3,692 employees were added to the APS workforce during the 2019-2020 financial year, representing a 2.5% increase in personnel.
Of the total number of staff members, 18,373 were non-going employees, leaving 132,101 to do the heavy lifting, which at 87.8% of all PS staff, was the lowest proportion of ongoing employees in the past 20 years.
“Women make up 60% of the APS, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 3.5% of the workforce,” the report says.
“Employees who identify as living with disability make up 4.0% of the APS, 17% of employees speak a language other than English and 22% were born overseas,” it says.
It says that at 30 June 2020, the most common employment classification was APS 6.
“Since 2001, the proportion of APS 6 employees has increased from 17.8% to 22.6% in 2020,” it said, “In 2001, the most common classification was APS 4 (24.7%). In 2020, this classification represented 18.1% of employees”.
The report said that most of the staffing increases occurred between 1 January and 30 June during the bushfire emergency and the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Of the non-ongoing employees, 7,755 (42.2%) were employed for a specified term or task and 10,618 (57.8%) were employed casually,” it said.
“The casual workforce currently accounts for 7.1% of the APS workforce, an increase of 6.3 percentage points since 2001,” the report said.
It said the largest net additions of employees over the 2019–20 financial year were in: * The Australian Taxation Office which increased its workforce by 2,084 employees, made up of an increase of 141 ongoing and 1,943 non-ongoing employees;
*Services Australia which increased is workforce by 1,242 employees, driven by an increase of 1,776 non-ongoing employees; and
* The National Disability Insurance Agency which increased its headcount by 906, of which 576 were ongoing employees.
The APS’s State of the Service report has been tabled in Parliament and is available on the APSC website at this PS News link.
