The following section provides information on remuneration outcomes by employment instrument, by sex and by employment category.

5.1 Employment instrument

An APS employee may have their terms and conditions set by one of the following primary employment instruments:

• Enterprise agreements (EA);
• Public Service Act Determinations (s24(1) and (3)) (PSAD);
• Common law agreements (CLA); or
• Australian workplace agreements (AWA).

An individual flexibility arrangement (IFA) may be used to vary the terms and conditions of an enterprise agreement. This is subject to the employee being better off overall than they would be if they remained on the terms provided by the EA.  

Most employees in the non-SES classifications are employed under an EA. Very small numbers at these levels are covered by PSADs, CLAs or AWAs. There has been a very small increase from 2013 to 2014 in the proportion of employees on PSADs. The proportion of employees on CLAs remains the same. There
are 136 AWAs remaining in the APS.

As at 31 December 2014, IFAs were in place for 3,535 APS employees, up from 3,295 in 2013. At the non-SES classifications, IFAs were used most commonly at the EL 2 level with 1,742 in place. However, this was down from 1806 in 2013.

Table 5.1 demonstrates that the most commonly used primary employment instrument at the SES levels was a PSAD.

For non-SES classifications, EAs tended to deliver a lower median Base Salary compared with other employment instruments (shown in Table 5.2). Note: at the non-SES classifications, PSADs are used as a short-term interim instrument during periods of structural change, such as machinery of government
changes. CLAs provided the highest median salary outcomes at the non-SES classifications. However, CLAs are rarely used at the non-SES classification levels. The EL 2 classification has the highest use of CLAs out of the non-SES classifications, with 0.6% of EL 2 employees covered by a CLA.

At the SES classifications, Table 5.2 shows that the employment instrument that provided the highest median value was AWAs. However, there was little difference between the median values provided by PSADs, CLAs and AWAs.

5.2 Remuneration data by sex

This section provides information on the key remuneration components based on sex by classification level.

Table 5.4 provides data on the median base salary for women, as a proportion of the median Base Salary for men. In 2014, the Base Salary for women, as a proportion of the median Base Salary for men, was 100% or higher at five classifications. The figures varied from 96.8% at the SES 3 classification
to 100.3% at the APS 4 level.

In 2014, there were no significant differences between the sexes across the three key remuneration components: Base Salary, TRP and Total Reward across all classification levels at the median values. Across the 5^th to 95^th percentiles, the only variation was at the SES 3 level, with some deviation towards women at the 5^th percentile and towards men at the 95^th percentile.

5.3 Employment category

APS employees may be engaged on either an ongoing or non-ongoing basis. Table 5.8 provides detail on the Base Salary by employment category and classification. Note: casual employees (non-ongoing and employed for duties that are irregular or intermittent) have been excluded.

At the APS 1 classification, 76.5% of employees are employed on an ongoing basis. The APS 2, 3 and SES 3 levels have non-ongoing employee populations of between 9.2% and 9.5%. All other classifications have fewer than 3.3% of employees on a non-ongoing arrangement.

The number of non-ongoing employees reported at 31 December 2014 was lower than 31 December 2013. For official APS population data, please see the APSC snAPShots December 2014 online publication.

The median Base Salary for employees engaged on an ongoing basis was consistently higher than non-ongoing employees for non-SES employees and consistently lower for SES employees. As engagement on a non-ongoing basis is time limited, there is generally not the same time available for these employees
to move through a salary scale. Hence the trend of higher median Base Salaries for employees engaged on an ongoing basis is not unexpected.