Workforce profile

Male and female employment

There has been particularly notable growth in women’s employment in the APS this year, reflecting strong growth in agencies which have a highly feminised workforce. The number of women rose from 82,428 to 88,621, an increase of 7.5%. The number of men rose from 63,806 to 66,861, an increase of 4.8%. Trends for total employment by sex are shown in Figure 2.4. Women now comprise 57.0% of APS employment, continuing a long-term trend of increasing female employment.

Women’s employment has been growing at a faster rate than men’s employment since 1999. The number of ongoing women employees increased by 7.9% to 81,187 at June 2007 compared with an increase of 4.7% for men, to 62,338 at June 2007. In contrast, the growth in non-ongoing employment was greater for men (6.4%) than for women (3.5%)— possibly reflecting an increasing number of men returning to non-ongoing employment after retirement. At June 2007, 57.3% of non-ongoing men aged 55 and over had previously worked as ongoing APS employees compared with 40.2% of women in the same age group. Nonetheless, women still account for a much higher proportion of non-ongoing employees—62.2% of non-ongoing employees are women compared with 56.6% of ongoing employees.

Figure 2.4 Total employees by sex, 1993 to 2007

Chart: description available below

Figure 2.4 shows the number of total employees, by sex, from 1993 to 2007. Over the period there was a decrease in the number of employees, followed by a period of growth, with women outnumbering men since 1999.

Source: APSED

Women account for at least 60% of non-ongoing employees at all levels up to APS 5. Female non-ongoing representation at EL classifications is similar to that for ongoing employees (42.0% compared with 43.5%) but much lower in the SES (23.3% compared with 36.1%).

Despite growing levels of female employment overall, there is still wide variation between agencies in the proportional representation of men and women. Of agencies with more than 1,000 ongoing employees, BoM had the highest proportion of men (79.3%), followed by Defence (62.0%) and Customs (59.3%). Agencies with the highest proportion of women were Medicare Australia (81.2%) and DHS (75.9%).