Workforce profile

Educational qualifications

Data for APSED, while incomplete, shows 53.0% of ongoing employees have graduate qualifications, up from 52.2% last year.¹³ The proportion with graduate qualifications is higher for men than for women (55.4% compared to 50.8%).

The long-term trend is for an increase in the engagement of people who have graduate qualifications. During 2006–07, 61.5% of those engaged had graduate qualifications. This contrasts with 52.1% 15 years ago. Although the quality of data on educational qualifications provided by agencies is improving, it continues to be very disappointing. Agencies have provided data for only one-third of those engaged during 2006–07.

13 The method used to calculate the proportion of employees with graduate or tertiary qualifications includes those with qualifications at bachelor’s 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 for their highest educational qualification.