A new report on NZ public service payroll data published by the Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission aims to help agencies lift their game, showing time off for illness has stayed relatively unchanged for the past five years.
According to new data, Kiwi public servants took an average of 8.3 sick days in 2021-22. The data was a slight improvement on days off for illness in 2017, when it was 8.4 days.
On the whole, things are improving for the 60,381 bureaucrats on the other side of the ditch: they seem to be getting younger, healthier and more fairly paid.
The ‘Public Service Workforce Data’ reports on staff numbers, age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, salaries and gender pay gaps as at 30 June 2022. It includes information relevant to all 37 government departments and agencies in New Zealand.
The number of public servants under the age of 35 has grown to 31% compared to 25% a decade ago, and gains to close the ethnic pay gap is good news for an increasingly diverse workforce.
This year the Māori pay gap improved (lifting from 8.3% to 6.5% in 12 months), as did the pay gap for Pacific employees (lifting from 21.7% in 2017 to 17.7%).
For public servants in NZ of Asian descent, however, the pay gap has widened from 11.6% to 12.4% in the past 12 months.
The NZ public sector workforce is also becoming more diverse and younger (a public servant’s average age of 44 is trending downwards), and more women are stepping into leadership roles (increasing from 39.8% in 2010 to 55.8%).
The pay gap for women in the APS, however, is better, with only a 6% gap in Australia overall compared to 7.7% in New Zealand. This year’s results marked the best for the NZ public service in terms of gender pay equity since the metric began to be measured in 2000 and when the difference was 18.6%.
In a statement, NZ Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes said diversity and inclusion, career and remuneration were among the workforce insights. Good progress in these areas could be seen in the latest report, he added.
“The rate of growth in the workforce stabilised in the last year. Over the past few years, the government invested more into frontline services to respond to high population growth,” Hughes said.
“The public service also needed to grow to implement the government’s COVID-19 response but we’re now coming out of that phase.
NZ public servants also enjoyed a 3.7% increase in average annual salary, growing from $87,600 to $90,800 in the past year, continuing to benefit those towards the lower end and middle of the pay distribution.
Hughes said conditions had improved to give fairer wages to lower-paid workers in the public service (public servants who earn less than $60,000 comprise 13.8% [1,630 FTE] to 10,150 FTE), while the nation faced whole-of-economy challenges with low unemployment, a domestic skills shortage and inflation.
“This has been achieved in the context of challenges facing the whole economy, including the borders remaining closed for much of the year, with all sectors of the economy, the public service included, experiencing tight labour market conditions,” he said.
“Turnover, in particular, has been a challenge but with economists predicting these conditions to ease over the next 12-18 months, turnover should return to normal levels.”
Another notable trend identified in the report included a decrease in chief executive pay by 1.4% since last year, representing a 5.2% decrease over the last five years.
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