APS job families
The Australian Public Service Job Family Framework groups roles that require the performance of similar or identical sets of tasks. The framework classifies jobs at 3 levels ꟷ family, function and role.
As at 30 June 2025, 57 agencies supplied job family data relating to 174,394 APS employees (87.8%).
Figure 5 shows the proportion of job families in the APS by headcount.
Figure 5: Proportion of job families in the APS (at 30 June 2025)
Source: APSED
Note: Senior Executive Service is reported in the classifications table in Appendix 2.
At 30 June 2025:
- the 5 largest increases in headcount over the previous year were in the job families of Policy (+2,403), Portfolio, Program and Project Management (+2,376), Service Delivery (+2,137), Administration (+1,874) and Legal & Parliamentary (+1,352)
- 12.2% of employees (24,135) do not have their job family recorded in APSED and are excluded from APS job family results. This is down from 14.7% of employees (27,213) in 2024, noting that change in the level of completeness of the data can affect year-on-year comparisons.
Figure 6 presents the location of APS job families across Canberra, other cities and regions across Australia.
Figure 6: APS job families proportion by location (at 30 June 2025)
APS Job Family Framework 2025 Review
The APS Centre of Excellence for Workforce Planning concluded a strategic review of the APS Job Family Framework, which aligns with the December 2024 release of the Australian Bureau of Statistics Occupation Standard Classification (OSCA) for Australia, formerly known as the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations.
An analysis of job family data usage and reporting identified opportunities to calibrate and streamline the Framework, which aligns with OSCA. The changes ensure consistency, statistical balance and feasibility.
The key changes to the framework include:
- splitting the Science and Health job family into two job families - ‘Science’ and ‘Health’
- moving cyber roles from Intelligence job family to ICT and Digital job family
- renaming Administration job family to Business and Organisational Management
- discontinuing the Senior Executive job family as roles have been moved into other relevant job families
- discontinuing the Monitoring and Audit job family as roles have been moved to Compliance and Regulation and Accounting and Finance
- consolidating Information and Knowledge Management and Intelligence into one job family
- renaming job functions for clear categorisation and groupings
- discontinuing job roles that can be aggregated to ensure statistical feasibility
- adding new roles requested by agencies.
The revision presents a refined occupational taxonomy for the APS, including 16 job families, 51 job functions and 229 roles that capture the core work of the service.
See also in this report
Ways of working with AI – Whole of Occupation Coding Service
Appendix 6 – APS workforce planning
Find out more
Australian Public Service Commission (2025) APS Job Family Framework, APSC website, accessed 10 September 2025.
Australian Public Service Commission (2024) Workforce planning resources, APSC website, accessed 12 August 2025.
Australian Public Service Commission (2025) APS Employment Data Release, APSC website, accessed 12 August 2025.