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Last updated: 11 October 2005
Managing and sustaining the APS workforce
3. Workforce trends
Figure 1 and Figure 2 in Chapter 2 show the distribution across the classification structure of the Australian Public Service (APS) workforce in the early 1980s, which was intrinsically much the same as it had been for many decades previously.
- New recruits typically joined at the bottom.
- Over 75% of new starters in 1983-84 joined at what are now the APS 1 or 2 levels.
- The majority of these were aged under 25, and almost 30% were aged under 20.
- Most employees stayed at the lower levels.
- Over 60% of all ongoing staff were in the range now encompassed by the APS 1-4 levels.
- There was a large cadre of middle managers.
- Over 25% were in the range now covered by APS 5 to EL 2, most of whom supervised small to medium-sized teams.
- Most staff were engaged in administrative, service delivery, regulatory and corporate support work.
- Only 30% of APS workers had tertiary qualifications.
- There was a small cadre of staff recruited annually to graduate programmes.
- Historically, this group represented around 5% or less of all APS recruits in a given year.
This report has already noted the internal and external influences that have transformed the APS employment environment since the 1980s. As Figure 6 shows, the late 1990s brought substantial across-the-board job reductions throughout the APS, with over 30,000 staff made redundant. The APS ongoing workforce diminished in size by close to one-quarter over this period.
Figure 6: Numbers of APS employees, 1984 to 2004
Source: APSED
Figure 6 reveals that APS staffing numbers began to rise again after 1999 during a period of intensive recruitment in which a net 20,000 additional staff were recruited (62,000 engagements minus 42,000 separations) to deliver specific new Australian Government initiatives.
Almost 75% of the net increase since 1999 has been at the APS 3-4 levels, which now effectively operate as the principal base levels for entry to the APS.
All these changes combined to produce a 2004 APS workforce with the following key characteristics:
- Agencies are ceasing to use the APS 1-2 levels.
- Only 11% of recruits and 6% of ongoing APS staff are at the APS 1-2 levels. As noted above, the APS 3-4 levels are now effectively the base entry point in most agencies.
- The APS workforce is becoming a graduate workforce.
- A rising proportion of recruits are mature, experienced workers from other sectors.
- Over 40% of new starters in the APS in 2003-04 were aged 35 or over and almost half of these joined at the APS 5 level or higher. Over 35% of staff at the EL and SES levels have served in the APS for less than 10 years, and half of this group joined the APS after their 35th birthday.
- Graduate programmes represent a link to the past.
- Despite all the shifts in the structure of the APS workforce, the structure and other key characteristics of graduate entry programmes have remained remarkably stable since the 1930s.
The key trends in the demographic and other characteristics of the APS workforce have been analysed in significant detail by Organisational Renewal in 2003 and in successive State of the Service reports. The following analysis draws out some aspects of these trends that will present particular challenges to agencies in managing and sustaining the APS workforce in the 21st century.
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