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Last updated: 1 December 2006
Main features
Abbreviations
A list of the abbreviations used in this report is available at Appendix 3
Ongoing staff
Composition
At June 2006 ongoing employees accounted for 91.9% of the APS, a 0.5 percentage point decrease in their representation from the previous year.
The proportion of ongoing employees working part-time (11.3%) rose very slightly during 2005–06,however when rounded to one decimal place there was no change.The proportion would have fallen to 10.9% had Medicare Australia not moved into coverage.
Classification
Fifteen years ago the APS 3–4 and APS 5–6 classification groups accounted for almost equal proportions of ongoing staff with 25.1% and 24.8% respectively. The proportion in the APS 1–2 classification group was much higher at 33.4%. By June 2006, the APS 1–2 level had fallen to just 4.5% of all ongoing employees. Over the same period, the proportion of staff at the APS 3–4 and APS 5–6 levels rose, with each group now accounting for over a third of all ongoing staff.
Representation of Executive Level (EL) employees has risen from 13.6% to 23.0% over the last 15 years. The size of the Senior Executive Service (SES) has fluctuated between 1.3% and 1.7% and is currently 1.7%.
At June 2006, trainees and graduate trainees accounted for 1.1% of ongoing staff. It should be noted that the number of graduate trainees does not represent the number of graduates recruited at all levels. During 2005–06, 63.0% of ongoing employees engaged were graduates.1
Figure 2 below shows the change in the number of employees by classification as a proportion of total ongoing employees over the last 15 years.
Figure 2: Ongoing employees by classification group, June 1992 to June 2006
Source: Table 8
Senior Executive Service
At June 2006, there were 2253 SES employees in the APS, up from 2028 last year.The proportional increase in the size of the SES (11.1%) was larger than the growth in the APS overall.
The composition of the SES has generally remained stable over the last 15 years. At June 2006, SES Band 1 employees comprised over three quarters of the SES (75.6%), with SES Band 2 at 19.5% and SES Band 3 at 4.9%.
The major change in the SES over the last 15 years has been the steady increase in the representation of women, from 13.6% in June 1992 to 34.8% in June 2006.Women are still concentrated at lower levels in the SES, although this year the strongest proportional growth for women was at SES Band 3, where their representation increased from 19 to 27 people—a rise of 42.1%.
Figure 3: Ongoing employees, proportion of women by SES band, June 1992 to June 2006
Source: Table 8
Age
The median age of ongoing APS employees at June 2006 was 42 years. The number of employees in the under 25 age group rose from 4987 to 5973 (an increase in proportional terms from 4.0% to 4.4%) during 2005–06. Over the 15 years to June 2005 this group’s representation has fallen from 9.8% to 4.4% of all ongoing employees.
The strongest growth in recent years has been in the representation of older age groups. Employees in the 45–54 age group represented 19.2% of all employees 15 years ago, and now represent 30.1%. Similarly, the 55 and over age group has increased from 5.7% to 10.6% over the past 15 years.
Sex
Over the past 15 years, women’s representation in the APS has increased from 46.6% to 55.8% of ongoing employees. In general, women are still employed at lower classification levels than men, but the gap is decreasing. Fifteen years ago, 72.0% of women were in the APS 1–4 group, but this had decreased to 48.4% at June 2006. For men, 46.7% were in the APS 1–4 group 15 years ago, compared with 30.6% at June 2006. Changes in women’s representation by classification over the past 15 years are shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Ongoing employees, proportion of women in selected classification groups, June 1992 to June 2006
Source: Table 8
Location
Almost two-thirds of APS staff are located outside Canberra. There was a slight increase in the proportion of ongoing staff based in the ACT (from 34.9% to 35.0%) in the year to June 2006.
The following table shows the distribution of ongoing staff by location.
| State/Territory | No. of staff | % of APS staff |
|---|---|---|
| Australian Capital Territory | 47,143 | 35.0 |
| New South Wales | 26,813 | 19.9 |
| Victoria | 22,168 | 16.5 |
| Queensland | 16,284 | 12.1 |
| South Australia | 8,180 | 6.1 |
| Western Australia | 7,916 | 5.9 |
| Tasmania | 3,211 | 2.4 |
| Northern Territory | 1,915 | 1.4 |
| Overseas | 1,002 | 0.7 |
| Total | 134,632 | 100.0 |
| Source: Table 20 |
Engagements
Over the 2005–06 financial year there were 20,688 engagements of ongoing employees, an increase of 79.4% from 11,530 in the previous financial year. However, all employees of Medicare Australia, which moved into coverage of the PS Act on 1 October 2006, are considered as engagements which artificially inflates this figure. Excluding all engagements to Medicare Australia during 2005–06, there were 15,217 engagements, an increase of 32.0% over the previous year. The agencies with the largest number of engagements were Centrelink, Defence, ATO and DEWR.
Excluding Medicare Australia, women comprised 59.9% of ongoing engagements, up from 58.1% the previous year.
Fifteen years ago, 55.6% of engagements were at the APS 1–2 level; in 2005–06, this had dropped to 7.7% (excluding Medicare Australia). In contrast, the APS 3–4 group increased from 13.3% to 49.3% over the same period.This classification group now accounts for most ‘base-level’ recruitment. Figure 5 below shows the proportion of engagements by classification over the last 15 years.
Figure 5: Ongoing engagements: proportion in selected classification groups, 1991–92 to 2005–06
Note: excludes engagements to Medicare Australia
Source: Table 24
Separations
There were 9506 separations of ongoing staff in 2005–06. This was a decrease of 1304 (or 9.8%) over last year’s figure of 10,540. Resignations were the most common form of separation in both years. As a proportion of all separations, resignations have increased from 52.7% in 1991–92 to 66.7% in 2005–06. There has, however, been considerable variation over the 15 years. In general, resignations have been lower in those years where the rate of voluntary redundancies has been higher. These trends are shown in Figure 6 below.
Figure 6: Ongoing employees: selected separations as a proportion of total separations, 1991–92 to 2005–06
Source: Table 36
Women accounted for 58.0% of resignations during 2005–06. Of people resigning, almost one in five (19.3%) had been working in the APS for less than a year.
Almost one third (31.8%) of men who took an age retirement had been employed for over 30 years in comparison with 6.6% of women.
The overall separation rate is calculated as the total number of separations during the financial year divided by the average number of employees at 30 June 2005 and 30 June 2006. During 2005–06 the separation rate was 7.4%. This value cannot be compared with a similar measure at agency level as the former does not take into account movements of employees between agencies. The agency retention rate in Table 12 should be used at agency level when assessing agency ‘turnover’.
Educational qualifications1
Of those ongoing employees who have supplied information about their educational qualifications, 51.9% have a bachelor degree or higher. Men are more likely than women to have graduate qualifications—54.0% compared with 49.9% for women. Indigenous employees (26.1%) are much less likely to have graduate qualifications and NESB1 employees (73.2%) are much more likely than the APS average of 51.9%. Those with a disability are somewhat less likely to have graduate qualifications (42.0%) compared with the APS overall.
Figure 7: Ongoing employees: EEO group by highest educational qualification, June 2006
Source: Table 48
1 The method used to calculate the proportion of employees with graduate or tertiary qualifications includes those with qualifications at bachelor degree and above. It excludes from the denominator those for whom no data was provided by agencies, and those who chose not to provide details of their highest educational qualification.
