Latest data from Australian Public Service Commission gives insight into the APS workforce

The latest headcount found 100 government agencies employed 161,645 public servants, up 4.1 per cent from December 2021.

An APS6 who works for Services Australia in Canberra, Jennifer Norton ticks a few common boxes among her peers.

Though the public service is scattered across the nation, jobs are still by far based out of Canberra, with 38.6 per cent concentrated in the ACT.

Ms Norton packed up her life in Townsville in 2016 to come to Canberra after her partner found a job in the capital. The pair moved with their two daughters and their cat.

"I was a bit nervous about moving to Canberra, coming from Townsville, where it's quite hot, to Canberra where you actually have seasons," she said.

Leaving family support networks behind was also daunting at the time.

"But otherwise moving to Canberra, I was quite excited work wise, I thought it was a lot of opportunities for me to grow."

The APS is comprised mostly of women, and this has been the case for the last twenty years.

Ms Norton, who belongs to a workforce which is 60.3 per cent female, said flexibility in the service was a drawcard for her as a mother.

"Being able to work in an environment that was quite flexible, that worked with my family, particularly being a mother was really important," she said, "And I think that it does attract a lot of women in the workforce.

"I think it's also important that we are reflective of the clients that we serve, so there are quite a lot of different backgrounds and diversity, so having women work for the agency is really important."

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Nearly a quarter of public servants work in service delivery, as Ms Norton does, making it the largest job family in the APS.

She works as an aged care specialist in a service centre, a role created in 2021, which she said allows her to help people who are often distressed.

"Mum and dad have got to go into care or they've been told that they have to sell their home and they don't know ... where they're going to live if they have to sell the home," she said.

"I'm able to give them options and say that's not always the case, so a lot of my customers leave, I feel, quite satisfied or they know where to go from there."

It's this area she wants to see continued growth into the future.

"We've got specialists to help refugees or Indigenous Australians and we've got financial information services," she said.

"So just continuing to make access to our services easier and providing other options for Australians."

Here's a breakdown of some of the characteristics of the APS workforce:

Canberra is still a public service town, with more than 62,000 bureaucrats settled here.

There is a revolving door of talent though, as new people move in and others return home.

Nearly 3200 public servants moved out of Canberra in 2022, but they were replaced by about 3400 settling in.

The next most popular locations for public servants are Victoria and NSW (16.6 per cent) and Queensland (12.4 per cent).

Like Ms Norton, most public servants are at the APS6 rank (23.2 per cent of them), and they work in service delivery (20.6 per cent).

The next most typical rank is EL1, a classification 20.3 per cent of bureaucrats held at the last count.

Compliance and regulation is the next most common job type within the APS, followed by administration.

Just over 6.4 per cent of the workforce were engaged in policy as of December 2022.

The public service definitely skews older.

More than a third of public servants are over 50, 28 per cent are aged 40-49, while nearly a quarter are 30-39.

Those under-30 represent 14.4 per cent of the workforce.

The younger you are, the fewer there are of you.

At 28 years old, Ms Norton is among 15,310 peers in the 25 to 29-year-old category.

Most employees have worked in the APS between 15 and 20 years (16.8 per cent), followed by between 10 and 15 years (15 per cent), then between five and 10 years (13.3 per cent).

Rates of diversity in the APS have remained exactly the same since 2020.

First Nations employees make up 3.6 per cent of the workforce, though the public service commission wants to increase representation to 5 per cent by 2030.

People with a disability account for 4.9 per cent of the workforce.

Those who were born overseas, into non-English speaking families, account for 5.4 per cent of the workforce, while those whose parents migrated from non-English speaking backgrounds make up 9.7 per cent of the APS.

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