Commonwealth public servants have worked perhaps harder than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic to steer the country through the once-in-a-century upheaval.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
But who are our public servants?
Well they're most likely to be a woman aged 43, who is an APS 6 at Services Australia and lives in Canberra.
The Australian Public Service Commission's State of the Service report, released on Monday, revealed many of the statistics that quantify the public service and detailed its diversity.
The Commonwealth public service grew 2.5 per cent in the 12 months to June 30, to reach an overall head count of 150,474.
This was made up of 132,101 ongoing staff and 18,373 employees on shorter-term contracts.
Diversity
The APS workforce is now made up of 60 per cent female employees, up from 59.6 per cent in 2019 and continuing a long term trend over the past 50 years.
There was a small drop in the representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the public service, from 3.6 per cent to 3.5 per cent.
There was a marginal increase in the rate of public servants with a disability from 3.7 per cent to 4 per cent.
The public service managed to become slightly less ethnically diverse with employees born overseas dropping from 22.3 per cent to 22.1 per cent and public servants from a non-english speaking country dropping from 16.2 per cent to 15.9 per cent.
The APS has launched strategies to attract more Indigenous employees and more staff with a disability and it will release a further strategy aimed at improving gender equality.
"A culture of inclusion is critical for the APS to achieve the benefits a diverse workforce can offer. It ensures APS work benefits from the perspectives and experiences that diversity brings," the report stated.
Women in the workforce
While there are considerably more women than men in the APS, they are still overwhelmingly represented in lower classifications.
Women make up more than 50 per cent of each APS classification from trainee through to EL1. The largest female cohort is at the APS 4 level where they account for 68.8 per cent of grade.
From EL2 and up it becomes a different story, where the workforce pendulum swing back to men.
At the SES 1 level women have almost reached parity at 49.9 per cent, but in SES 2 and 3 men account for 57.9 per cent and 54.9 per cent of the workforce respectively.
The report noted more work was needed to reduce the gender pay gap in the APS where it is 7.3 per cent in favour of men. This has reduced from 9.1 per cent in 2015 and is better than the national figure of 13.9 per cent.
The average base salary for men in the APS is $98,149 and for women it is $91,016.
Women were represented in significantly higher proportions in the health, service delivery, administration and human resources fields.
Science, engineering, trades and IT were dominated by male employees.
Classifications
The most common APS classification was once again APS 6, with 22.6 per cent of employees at that level. It has been the classification with the most employees since 2011.
The next most common classifications were APS 4 (18.1 per cent) and EL1 (17.9 per cent).
The four largest agencies accounted for 56 per cent of the APS and were Services Australia, the ATO, the Defence Department and Home Affairs.
Geography
Canberra remains the heart of the Commonwealth public service with 37.7 per cent of the total workforce, or 56,654 public servants.
NSW and Victoria follow with 17.8 and 17.2 per cent respectively.
Fourteen per cent of public servants were located in regional areas with the growth in jobs outside capital cities predominantly occurring in NSW.
Age
The public service got younger in the 12 months to June 30. The number of workers in the under 20 and 20-24 age brackets grew marginally, while the number in both the 45-54 and 55+ age brackets decreased.
The average age of Commonwealth public servants is 43.5 years old.
