Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
Figure 1 Jurisdictional composition of public sector employment. Source: ABS 2018.
An overview of trends in public sector employment over the past decade is
provided in Figure 1. This figure shows that there has been an increase overall
in the number of public sector employees, from 1.75 million in 2007–8 to 1.99
million in 2017–18. 14 However, as a proportion of the total workforce, public sector
employee numbers declined from 21 per cent in 1990 to 16 per cent by the end of
the 1990s, where they have remained, apart from a slight rise in 2007–11. Public
sector workers currently constitute 15.5 per cent of the workforce. 15
The relative proportions of those employed across the three levels of government
have also remained stable over the decade. However, the compositions of the
Commonwealth and state/territory public sectors are quite different, reflecting the
significantly greater role the state and territory public sectors play in direct service
delivery to individuals, communities and businesses. Only around one-quarter of
the Commonwealth public service works on service delivery. 16 Conversely, the
proportion of those in the states and territories working on service delivery tends
to be much larger (around 80–85 per cent), with a correspondingly smaller number
working on policies for these governments. 17
At around 36 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), general government
spending in Australia is not large by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) standards; 18 this proportion has not changed much over the
preceding two decades. By themselves, however, statistics on the size of and trends
in public sector employment and expenditure tell us very little, compared with how
ideasabouttheappropriateroleforgovernmentschangeovertimeandarereflected
14 ABS 2018.
15 ABS 2017.
16 Australian Public Service Commission 2018.
17 Data sourced from state government workforce statistics.
18 OECD 2018. Commonwealth government outlays alone represent around 25.4 per cent of GDP
(Commonwealth of Australia 2018).
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