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Last updated: 11 October 2005
Managing and sustaining the APS workforce
3. Workforce trends
Indigenous employees
Almost one-quarter of employed Indigenous people work in the public sector. In comparison, around one-sixth of the general workforce work in the public sector.12
In 2001, around 27% of Indigenous public servants were employed by APS and other Australian Government agencies, with a much higher proportion employed in state and territory public services.
The numbers of Indigenous people employed in the APS have tended to fluctuate in recent years.
In 1990, slightly over 2000-or around 1.6%-of ongoing APS employees identified themselves as being Indigenous people. Two-thirds of these were at the APS 1-3 levels, compared with half of all ongoing employees.
By 1996, the number of APS employees identifying themselves as being Indigenous people had risen to over 3000, comprising around 2.5% of the workforce.
Since that time, the proportion of employees identifying themselves as being Indigenous people has fallen slightly; in June 2004, it stood at 2.3% of the APS workforce. While action needs to be taken to reverse this downward trend, the current participation rate of Indigenous people in the APS workforce still compares favourably with the 1.4% average across the Australian labour force.
The numbers of Indigenous people employed at middle and senior management levels have been rising significantly over the same period:
- at the APS 5-6 levels, their numbers rose from around 600 in 1995 to over 800 in 2004
- at the EL 1 and 2 levels, their numbers more than doubled from around 130 in 1995 to 260 in 2004
- similarly, in the SES, their numbers rose from 13 in 1994 to 24 in 2004.
The numbers of Indigenous people reaching working age have been growing and are projected to continue to grow at a much faster rate than applies to the general population.13
Only 3% of Indigenous Australians have tertiary qualifications, as opposed to 19% of the general population of working age and over 60% of new recruits to the APS in 2003-04 (see Figure 4 in Chapter 2). Indigenous Australians are over-represented in low skilled work, with 24% employed in labouring and similar types of occupations, compared to less than 10% of the general population.14
APS agencies are making strong efforts to recruit from the limited pool of Indigenous graduates, with the agency survey conducted for this project finding that 17 out of 66 agencies have Indigenous cadetship programmes and nine have Indigenous graduate or trainee schemes. Moreover, 21 agencies are currently participating in the Indigenous Graduate Recruitment Initiative, a collaborative recruitment and placement exercise designed to meet participating agencies' needs for Indigenous graduates in 2006.
However, while recruitment of Indigenous graduates will continue to be an important mechanism for sustaining and improving participation levels of Indigenous people in the APS workforce, other pathways that attract non-graduates will also be critically important.
Another priority will be that of addressing the comparatively low retention rates of Indigenous employees (half of those who leave the APS have less than five years experience, as opposed to only one-third of non-Indigenous employees).
A further difficulty in recruiting Indigenous people to the APS is their concentration in regional and remote areas-69.5% in 2001 compared to 34.1% of non-Indigenous Australians.15 As was shown in Chapter 2 (Figure 5), there is a long-term trend for APS employment-particularly at the middle to higher levels-to be concentrated in Canberra.
Further discussion of data and issues around the employment of Indigenous people in the APS can be found in the Australian Public Service Commission's annual State of the Service Report.16
12 Australian Bureau of Statistics 2002, Census of Population and Housing 2001, ABS, Canberra.
13 Australian Bureau of Statistics 2004, Experimental Estimates and Projections, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, Cat. No. 3238.0, ABS, Canberra.
14 Australian Bureau of Statistics 2003, Population Characteristics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, Cat. No. 4713.0, ABS, Canberra.
15 Australian Bureau of Statistics 2002, Census of Population and Housing 2001, ABS, Canberra.
16 Australian Public Service Commission 2004, State of the Service Report 2003-04, Australian Public Service Commission, Canberra, pp. 150-60.
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