Section 5: Equal employment opportunity

Abbreviations

A list of the abbreviations used in this report is available at Appendix 3

The Commissioner’s Directions specify that the APS Value on equity in employment requires, in particular, measures aimed at eliminating any employment-related disadvantage on the basis of:

being an Indigenous Australian
sex
race or ethnicity
physical or mental disability.

With the exception of sex, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) data is supplied to agencies by individuals on a voluntary basis, and forwarded by agencies to be entered onto APSED. Overall, non-response varies widely between agencies.

The current focus on improving employment outcomes for people with disability and for Indigenous Australians in the APS provides an even greater emphasis for ensuring that the quality of data is robust. The Commission continues to work with agencies to encourage employees to provide this data to their agency’s HR system.

Because no new measurement regime has yet been agreed for ‘race or ethnicity’, for the purpose of this publication NESB 1 and 2 are used for reporting purposes. NESB 1 refers to people born overseas who arrived in Australia after the age of five and whose first language was not English. NESB 2 refers to children of migrants, including: those who were born overseas and arrived in Australia before the age of five but did not speak English as a first language; those who were Australian born but did not speak English as a first language and had at least one NESB parent; and those people who were Australian born and had neither parent speaking English as a first language.

Figure 12 shows the change in the representation of the four EEO groups from their proportion at June 1992. Each of these proportions is weighted by the ratio of the June 1992 total ongoing APS number to the number of employees in the respective EEO group at June 1992. Weighting eliminates the effects that the changes in the overall size of the APS have on representation. The index is given a value of 100 at June 1992, and rises and falls proportionally with the particular group’s change in the weighted number over time. For example, at June 1992 the number of Indigenous Australians was 2746 out of an ongoing APS population of 142,372. By 1998 the number of Indigenous Australians had risen to 2921 but the ongoing APS number had dropped to 108,524. Therefore the weighted IA number for 1998 is 3832.0, which is 139.6% of the original index.

Figure 12: Change in population, weighted and indexed, for EEO groups, 30 June 1992 to 30 June 2006

Source: APSED